There Is Too Much
by Grimm Sister
Summary: A brief look at the episodes of Robin Hood, from beginning to end. Dear Robin, your story is beautiful. Let me sum up. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue: There is Too Much

There Is Too Much

Another man who was a pirate but also a good guy – the best man in the world – woke up from what felt like death and was a death and screamed first for violence and revenge: "I beat you both apart, I'll beat you both together!" And then he asked, all in a rush – "Who are you? Are we enemies? Why am I on this wall? Where's Buttercup?"

And, like that man, an outlaw who was good – the best guy in England, still its hero – woke up from what felt like death and had been a death and cried first for violence and revenge – and who could blame him? He beat his enemies in the Crusades, he beat the Sheriff in Nottingham. He beat them both together. And then he asked, all in a rush: who was his king – was he the savior of England? Who are our enemies really – can we stop the war and save England now? Why am I here – what do I do now? And what happened to my beautiful Marian?

The first man was answered: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." And he was given the problem before him.

So, I would explain, because that's what you deserve, but there is too much. I would speak of loyalty and bravery and dashing and cunning and escapes and chases and friendship and victory and defeat and love. There is too much. Let me sum up.


	2. 11 Will You Tolerate This? A Clue: No

**Part One**

**How Long Till We Break?**

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**I.i Will You Tolerate This?**

**A Clue: No**

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You returned home from the war, still licking your wound. They sent you home to recover – an arduous journey that only makes sense when you realize that it was a psychological injury. You see, you couldn't kill anymore, and you were a Crusader. So you came home where you could get away without killing for a while, and you recovered slowly from that injury.

But you didn't come back to rest. You arrived in a very different place than you had left – awful, in fact. You couldn't understand how it had happened. You took back your house with sheer bravado and a fur collar, and it worked. But then you tried to do the same to fix your home, and everybody knew you were crazy. Because while Gisbourne acted like a pushover – because you were without trying everything he wanted to be and it's easy to get stars in your eyes the first time – the new Sheriff was anything but. For there was a new sheriff in town, and he was not the kindly, fair old man whose daughter was Maid Marian – whose daughter could only have been Maid Marian if he was to survive.

Sir Edward lost his post because he was careless, and because he was never as aware and fearful and as much of a fighter as his daughter. And he lost his chance to change things by speaking out openly – although less ridiculously than you had, spilling common sense at them with bravado and insulting them with a smile when they didn't listen. And the love of your life's father asked you to calm down, play the long game, slowly turn the other nobles against the Sheriff then strike in one decisive blow. It was a cleverer plan than yours, but it wouldn't have worked. It didn't work, in time.

But you didn't have time for that because in the meantime two boys had stolen flour so that their father could eat and they were to be hanged – Will and Luke Scarlett – Allan-a-Dale there too, the first man you saved in England, a petty con man – famous names in Robin Hood lore. Their father had small hopes you couldn't understand, just to be left in peace, gave up his craftsman's hand so his children could flourish and never blamed anyone, least of all you. And they all begged you to take the boys' father's forgiveness – to listen when he told you that he didn't blame you for having to read their execution notices, for not having been able to save them.

But you couldn't do that. They sent you home from war because you couldn't kill. So you shot down their ropes with your almost magical arrows that could do anything but strike through the heart, and you escaped into Sherwood Forest – an outlaw on his way to becoming a legend, with the ever-faithful Much leaping after you. And Marian saved your life, even after telling you she hated you for leaving, and you blew her a kiss as you left.

She had said a lot of things that she didn't mean before you chose: most of all, that she didn't want you to fight back.


	3. 12 Sherrif Got Your Tongue?

**I.2 Sheriff Got Your Tongue?**

**If There's One Thing I Can Do, It's Talk**

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The Sheriff went to Locksley demanding where you'd gone. It was the wrong place to look, but it will always be the right place. You said later, to your captors, laughing, "You've taken us home." Which is why Guy of Gisbourne will always sound dumb claiming Locksley and Marian for his own.

The Sheriff offered immunity no one trusted, money everyone needed, and finally a threat everyone understood. Met with silence, he promised to make that silence permanent – he took a tongue every hour you were away. If they had known where you were, would they have spoken? These are the questions we do not ask – but they might have helped, in the end, with Nettlestone's birthday party.

There were outlaws in Sherwood Forest before you came, and Little John was their leader. But they stole indiscriminately, and they didn't really bother anyone. They were dead men. You brought them back to life. There were submission games – you let them tie you up, then you tied them up, then you fought, and finally they bound you and took you to the Sheriff. And you talked – used your tongue with nearly as much skill as your bow – to get them to trust you.

And you shot the tongue shears out of the sky to save Little John's Alice and gave yourself up in a flurry of words and PR that was damn good, "A pound or two for every family here." Double meaning, that, your flesh and the reward money. You pledged yourself to them with those words, and you did it freely, because you did not know yet that the last pound, the last thing it would cost you, would be her.

In the dungeons you waited, martyrdom not a bad fate for a soldier who can no longer kill. And the Sheriff came to taunt you with your injury, and Marian came to taunt you with the decision to go to the war that caused it, then offered to save your life again. But you won the loyalty of all the outlaws of Sherwood Forest, and they attacked the castle to save you – all those dead men, and you brought them back to life. Much was what you always used to shame them. All they needed to be your men was to see how dead they really were – and Little John stared at his wife with the son he hadn't known he had and spoke with the boy, and knew that your offer of life was better.

And you had Royston White pretend to be a soldier you could pretend to shoot in front of the Sheriff so he wouldn't know your injury. And you shut him up, then told him that if he ever harmed anyone else in your name you would kill him. You would force yourself to heal the injury.

And again you escaped, but this time not as an outlaw: as the head of a family, as a legend. And you knew the secret about Marian: she was only faking her anger and disdain, even if she kept up the act when you were alone to one degree or another. When the chips were down, she would help you escape from the dungeons. The first time was a fluke, and you didn't see it with your own eyes. Now you knew. Marian wanted you alive.

She said a lot of things she meant: the biggest was that, before you left, you had exchanged rings.


	4. 13 Who Shot the Sheriff?

**I.3 Who Shot the Sheriff?**

**Process of Elimination**

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There were three questions before the games could start. This is the last. You had four when you awoke. The last in Marian. She is not lost yet.

There were two sides of a battle now, and both sides were lining up their armies. It was the last chance, they thought, to draw someone away.

Robin Hood told a miller that he would take care of the taxes that were going to close his mill, and because your men were annoyed that you needed to see their faces when the miller told his family the good news, needed desperately to see their love for you, you told the tax collector to say it was his idea. To shut them up. And he was a good man, despite his job, and he spoke softly of your secret – then an arrow shot out of the forest and the people of Nettlestone thought you had fulfilled your promise stupidly.

Everyone thought it was you, and you thought it was the Night Watchman, and no one would listen, even when you brought the last of your bread to Nettlestone and begged them to love you again. But the assassin had struck again – missing the Sheriff and killing the miller's son. Much was a miller's son in Robin Hood lore.

The people said to keep them out of both armies. What gifts will the Sheriff bring later? Your own personal battle - with other people's lives. It was a terrible observation, which could have become a terrible truth so easily.

And in the castle the Sheriff was testing his lieutenants, setting the dogs on you with Gisborne and, with the Master-at-arms, making more "pretty deaths" to stoke the fires of hatred against you. Marian found the guard who had been shooting, called him by the name of an old friend, and went herself to settle matters.

You went to the Castle to lay down the rules with the Sheriff. You showed him how easy it would be to kill him, and then you promised not to – if he played the game as well. So he called off the dogs and gave you the Forest, for the time being. You answered the main question remaining - which was where you would both stop, for the time being. And you gave him the dog tags, so he would always know your men. So he could not punish the innocent in your name.

Marian hid you in her bed as you made your escape and told you that acting like an untouchable hero was bad. You said you had been hurt. And she told you again that it was not the Night Watchman, but you didn't listen. She told you you can't change things just by wishing, and you told her you were trying. You hit her with a flirt and run again, like the arrow to get her attention, and she was angry again, but she let you in her bed and held the covers just enough to keep her modesty.

You caught the Night Watchman, and it was Marian, of course. Because she is the other half of your own soul. You sprang off, and she showed you the true assassin, a disgruntled guard whose wife had died while you were away, before you brought Nottingham back to life. You said you knew his pain, because you didn't know that that was a prophecy. He didn't listen any more than you did.

The Sheriff was saved, to keep Nettlestone village from being burnt to the ground in retribution, and your men followed you even in that. Guy killed Joe the Guard because you were injured, hurt in a way Marian couldn't see. And Vaisey knew that you would not forgive the political machinations that killed three callously, so you chose among his deputies. The Sheriff agreed and called off the dogs but made Guy Master-at-Arms because the other was Machiavellian, and the two of you had agreed on games for money and honor and PR and even lives – but not politics. Not what Marian's father had wanted. And it would be bad, but it would be better than the alternative. And the Master-at-Arms could not be trusted to play. And it was a good choice you made, but you didn't know that it would cost you Marian. Twice.

You were proud of her, and she was proud of you, when the people of Nettlestone loved you again, and she knew that you fed on love, especially hers. And John Little entered a village and broke down the wall the Sheriff put up between Nettlestone and their bread, because he didn't know how painful it could be to come back to life. Things we do not talk about, when we're happy. Marian called it glory, but she was always wrong about that. She smiled at you, and you knew.

And she told you many things you needed to hear, in the depth of your despair, but the most important was this: there are still people who love you.


	5. 14 Parenthood

**I.4 Parent Hood**

**Where is Your Heart?**

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Three questions to start with: will you play? Are you a worthy opponent? What are the rules? Now we can start.

The first game you played was full of division and tests, of finding out what you weren't and holding to a man's word, when it's lies. Lessons for later.

You learned that Gisborne could play, and you learned that he could charm. And you learned that he was heartless. That's why he wanted to share Marian's heart with her, later. That's why you should have known how it would end. He seduced a kitchen girl – a sweetheart, a simple child – and he told her if she had a title she would be his wife. She accepted that, because she was sweet and simple and knew her place. Sir Guy took their baby and left him in Robin Hood's forest.

Did he wonder, when he followed the trail of the horses he had cleverly marked, that you were heading straight for his abandoned son? Did he hesitate to strike you at all, as you fought him and his goons with his child in your arms? It didn't stop him from taking Royston White. Much good that it did him under torture. They flung the dog tags at Royston. What are these worth?

The men you brought back to life were furious that you might have done so only to get them killed, but Royston White knew that death was better than being a dead man. As they moaned and you frantically planned, he recited a soldier's mantra as they beat him, "My name is Royston White. I fight for Robin Hood and King Richard." Because he didn't know that his name was all they needed.

The Sheriff told Guy he had the rules wrong again, that he was being terrible. Then he told poor Royston to kill you, and he replied, "I'd sooner kill my own mother." Because he didn't know the sadistic games the Sheriff was playing: that's exactly what he had in mind.

Royston got a knife and the story of Gisborne's baby then set out to kill you. In the meantime, Marian was seeing the Sheriff's evil side. He would let a village that got over the plague starve to death so he could build a fort, and she tried your method of bravado to get inside. She was damn good at it, but she was lucky you turned up to scare off the guards and shoot the food with arrows over the walls while she held Gisborne's baby in her arms. Would he have regretted anything if he saw that? She was lucky the Sheriff didn't know you helped her. He only cut off her hair for showing him a liar and herself as kind, because with Marian it was a political game. Not to the death yet. Not until the very end was it that, between them.

Royston told you he escaped and that the baby belonged to a frightened woman whose husband was imprisoned. He took you alone, but Marian saved your life as you saved her. She tended your wound – gently touched the Crusade wound she was glad of but would help to heal eventually – and was rough with the new arrow through your arm. And a woman mistook the baby for yours and hers. "That is not our baby," she said. Because she didn't know it was a curse.

And in a dream of the Holy Land there was another assassination attempt – on you this time, and luckily no more successful than the last. Royston hesitated killing you but got caught by darling Much, and the men who had been brought to life offered to make him dead – better at least than a dead man. You told him: every man here would have died for Royston. But would they kill their own mother? These are questions we do not ask. But they might have helped later – with Allan, and they might have saved Will's father. But you were still badly wounded – you wouldn't play those choices. You offered to save his mother, instead, and Gisborne's squeeze.

And Guy was already on to a new one, Marian who had not had your child. And they told Annie what had been done to the baby she thought was safe in an Abbey, destined for a better life, and at the crucial moment she held a knife to Gisbourne's throat to stop the execution of Royston's poor mother. The Sheriff turned to gloat and you caught him. Everyone escaped except Royston, who gave himself up because he knew that the life you offered was better than being a dead man, died reciting the mantra, flung the dogtags back at you. They were worth his life, at least. You gave him his life back, and he repaid the debt.

Annie and the baby they all lied and said they wouldn't miss went somewhere new with a tiny bow and arrows. Marian sent Guy's baby – the baby that wasn't hers and yours – away quickly. She brushed away the hair she lost in her political game. She smiled at you, as she followed through on your rescue of the woman Gisborne hurt so terribly. Neither you nor she understood that it was a warning of things to come.

And she told you many things with great regret, the most painful of which was that you were always headed in different directions.


	6. 15 Turk Flu

**I.5 Turk Flu**

**What Will You Believe?**

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A young boy named Rowan son of Dunn, a name that made Robin Hood lore, believed that, despite what happened with Annie, Gisborne has a heart somewhere. Or he believed in Robin Hood – standing up to those in power on behalf of what's right. He believed if his father stood up to Gisborne no more miners would die harvesting iron ore. Sir Guy of Gisborne ran the boy's father through with his sword, what you did not know was that it was a vision of things to come.

Then the boy believed in hopelessness. Marian fed him as the Night Watchman and came away from her faceoff with Gisborne marked – the first time, it is blatant. A wound on the arm. Then the boy believed in revenge. He believed killing Gisborne would lessen his pain. You stopped him, because it would spoil the plan and it would not help Nottingham. Then he believed in taking away what Gisborne loves, and Marian fed him real healing before you stopped him from striking her down. And the boy finally believed in the silver arrow.

Which was all that you could talk about in the forest – annoying the hell out of your men. Robin Hood lore was right – you couldn't resist the most obvious trap in the world. Like Gisborne's archer wouldn't have sounded beyond stupid claiming he was the best in Nottingham anyway. Much believed he could reason you out of it.

But the real story of Much's beliefs was that he believed he would never see the slave trade again. But you stumbled upon a man who had caged infidels because Christians could no longer be sold. A cruel man who believed that everyone would agree that this was right and good, even speaking this way to Robin Hood. Much believed in a simple solution, in renouncing faith to gain freedom. He also believed that God would punish him, and that every setback and mistake was a result of him pretending to renounce Christianity to prove a point to a slave who spoke perfect English and made more sense than most Englishmen.

A slave boy who turned out to be a girl, who believed that you were no better than her captor, until you understood her fellow's word for "pray." You met her eyes and she reevaluated you, and I think she fell the first step in love with you then. She believed in you enough to go along with your plan to destroy the iron mine. Then she believed she was being spied on by the boy who had looked at her and feared the "Turk Flu" the slave trader mentioned. He fell over in a swish of tree branches, and I think she fell the first step in love with the boy for whom it would stick. That was the illustrious beginning of Will Scarlett and Djaq who was also called Safia, though not by Englishmen. And when the mine collapsed she believed in Little John, and what her father had taught her, and that your band was worth protecting and saving. Worth joining, she knew later, worth staying in this foreign soil so far from home. And the girl finally believed in Robin Hood.

So you danced your games with the Sheriff – made his men in the mine believe in the "Turk Flu" and panic themselves out of the iron mine. And you sent the slave trader back to warn the Festival so you could sweep in and win the silver arrow and distract Gisborne from pawing all over Marian. Nearly ruined it in your hubris but sent Djaq to save your family and earn her right to join it. And you burned the death trap to the ground. In the meantime, Marian fought her own battles, because neither of you knew yet that it could kill her.

Gisborne came to her house to mark her again – this time knowingly. Not so he would know who the Night Watchman was, but so the world would know she was his. You needn't have worried, he always sounded stupid trying to claim her. You took pleasure in that, because you did not know that the shock of the truth would cost you the prize, that Gisborne would break it in his fury. In a political game, Marian chose association with Sir Guy over being found out as the Night Watchman. She believed Sir Guy was not the worst thing that could happen to her, because the moment she stopped underestimating him she started overestimating him.

She hid herself at the Festival, cut her hand to hide the blood on her sleeve. She believed that her father would understand if she told him of the good she had done, of the class boundary she had crossed. He did not. She believed that it was no competition between her and you, as she'd been doing it three years longer. She believed that she could talk to the shattered boy holding an arrow to her heart because he wanted to hurt a man who needed her to feel like he was human. What he will be like now I cannot imagine. But she was right. She gave the boy his belief in the silver arrow.

And you arrived, as you had from the Holy Land, after the first battle was over. Not in time to save her if she had failed the boy, not in time to save her father's sheriff post. She told you it was all right, because she did not know that it was a foreshadowing of things to come, with darker ends. She told you how to have your heart's desire as well as the boy's – and you got to win your precious silver arrow and let the boy come away with the prize and the money to feed his family that Gisbourne condemned to starvation.

She explained her beliefs to many people, but the hardest won belief she saved for you: "Better late than never, I suppose."


	7. 16 The Tax Man Cometh

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**A/N:** I don't usually believe in Author's Notes, so I probably won't write many more, but I just wanted to say that I greatly appreciate the reviews you've written for me. And because I can't help myself but address Lady Kate1's comment: I love Gisborne's character myself, but all the more because of how much he's grown and changed over the series. I think it's a shame to overlook how he started, because that makes how far he's come far less remarkable.

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** The Tax Man Cometh**

**How _Do_ They Find the Truffles?**

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There was a running joke that no one found funny but you until Much finally got it near the end. Pigs in slops are supposed to be happy. You knew that phrase, no one else cared, of course, and even you didn't know why. It's not because they like the slops. It's because they use pigs to find truffles – delicious and expensive on a massive and tempting level. Pigs in slops with truffles buried inside. Pigs are the best way to find them, but they get at least half of the truffles for themselves.

The Sheriff wouldn't have cared and even you didn't care where the expression came from, but it would have helped – when the Sheriff decided to add a third front to the battle. A three-headed monster he thought he could control in the form of con men. Pigs, in slops. The Sheriff thinks they're daft to be thrilled.

And you certainly aren't when you meet a resident pig who's been selling slops and calling them truffles – namely rotten meat as "economy cuts." He turns you in after you asked nicely for him to stop, and you and Much end up in the Castle trash bins where you try to explain the pigs in slops thing to him – but without the truffles explanation. You were always cheerful these days, happy in your slops because you knew where the truffles were. Much hadn't learned how to find them yet.

An Abbess arrived in Nottingham saying you'd attacked her. The Sheriff loved teasing nuns, but with this one he wasn't as off the mark as he thought. He called her a leech on society, and he had no idea how right he was – because he led her right into the Chapel where he had hidden the tax money for the whole of the North.

And, oh, you couldn't resist that. Not when you caught a taxman and his son in the woods and they told you it was the Age of the Bean Counter now and that the Age of Heroes has passed. You knew that lie well, they've been telling it forever – every age is the Age of Heroes. So you picked through the slops of their lies and snottiness to find the truffles – the nugget of truth inside their lies. The one you followed to a dungeon in the castle. The one that locked you inside.

And as they were all panicking, and you were enjoying the irony of the trick just a little, Marian was having slops dumped on her by her father as she patiently tried to explain that she was pulling truffles out. She was giving away part of her upper class nonsense to pigs, as her father still thought of them in the back of his mind – these are things we don't talk about. But they might have helped, in the end, with the Sheriff's disappearance and Little John's mutiny. With Sir Edward's lethargy. With the first round of Locksley or England.

So Marian found a new set of slops to be happy in, but only after you were too busy to help her. Then she got hard, and she went to the Abbess, and she offered her a truffle – a woman who would pay her own way to stay somewhere respectable but far away. And the Abbess told her she could use someone like her. And Guy of Gisborne freaked out all kinds of ways on her for trying to leave. You and Marian ignored that, because you did not know that it was the beginning of the end.

Then you escaped from the dungeons, of course, because if the Sheriff were serious about all of this he would have had men with bows and arrows there ready to take you out not just stuff you in a cage. Will Scarlett looked through the ugly slops of the empty chests you thought were gold to save Nottingham and saw a truffle: he matched the locks inside to the door then used that to take it apart. He's all kinds of handy, that one. And Djaq was proud.

Gisborne was smarting from Marian's abandonment and taunted you with the Abbess, so you knew what had happened. The Sheriff really thought con men would come cheap. The Abbess Rapunzeled down the windows from the chapel and took the lifetime supply of truffles with her.

And you followed the boy who couldn't talk Djaq into cutting his bonds – she'd tried every way there was, even a conman was a novice to her – and they found the pigs riding a wagon of slops. Then Robin reached down and pulled the truffles from the midst of the muck, and Little John tossed the three-headed-pig in the slops, and Much laughed and said your joke. And you bought good, fresh meat – delicious as truffles after economy cuts – straight from the cattle owners for the next few years with the dirty tax money.

But Marian was up a creak – the slops falling all around her – and she didn't know it. She gave her father her demands and he agreed, and he told her what she needed to hear. Before Sir Guy arrived and gloated that she had no choice in the matter, she had already found truffles in the muck.

She told many people many things, asked many for shelter, but the most desperate time was you, because she wanted you to ask her to come to the Forest with you.


	8. 17 Brothers in Arms

**I.7 Brothers in Arms**

**Is He With You?**

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There was a lot of taking your name in vain this time. Allan's brother did it constantly. He was the dead kind of outlaw, although he was rampaging about like a zombie rather than lying quietly in his grave.

And the Sheriff had a cocky accomplice as well – Lucky George, who didn't want to be officially associated with him. A parasite who scared the people of Locksley into selling him their valuables for pennies because the Taxman Still Cometh. Was there a new tax levied to replace the money you stole? These are questions we do not ask, but they might have helped later, when Lucky George reappeared, with Guy's clever ruse. People like the Sheriff and George do not go down so easily. Can you point your sword at every injustice? How long before that stops working? These are questions we do not ask, but they mind have helped, later, with Kate. And more food for thought, which you might have tasted before faking your death childishly – before you this pawn shop peddler was the closest the villagers had to help. Where will you leave them if you let yourself die? These are things we don't talk about. Not yet.

Allan's brother Tom is too busy talking about everything else – anything that will keep him from being beaten. You put him on probation and put Allan in charge of him, making yourself the father of both of them. And children rebel, Robin, sooner or later. A lesson Will might have learned now to save mess later. A warning we all might have taken from the other a-Dale.

A woman gave her daughter her one treasure as she went to take a man as her lawful wedded husband, but she went to Guy for that. He took her necklace for Marian. And Marian took it to keep him from being mad, because she didn't know that appeasing him in pieces would just make her total betrayal worse. Or she did but didn't know a better way in a political game.

She gave it to you when you saw it, and she was angry despite your flirting. Both her boys wanted to claim her today, and she gave Guy's gift to you. Because you didn't think. You two never did with Sir Guy. "What will you say to Gisborne?" These are questions you should have asked. Because he hadn't given it as a token but as a collar, to tell the world she was property of Guy of Gisborne.

And you should have been more careful, because the Sheriff told Gisborne to set a trap. George's ambush had tipped her hand, they knew there was a spy. Guy told only his beloved captain and, though he didn't notice, Marian, about a red herring. And you fell for it, of course, and barely seemed to realize it was about to cost you her.

To be fair, Tom was creating a hell of a distraction, attacking Marian and her father in your name, and getting a major beat down by the Night Watchman in the process – was that even more embarrassing? And they weren't with you anymore, but Marian's father looked proud of her now. He looked like he wanted to cheer – she's with me! But he also knew what you didn't.

And Allan begged you to bring Tom back to life as you had him, but these weren't the ghosts of Sherwood Forest but the zombies of Nottingham, and they stole everything and then tried to rob Lucky George. The Sheriff's coattails are stronger than yours. So the Sheriff had Robin Hood's men to hang, and Sir Guy had his captain tortured for a confession. So you and Marian both had a choice. You could risk all your men to walk into a trap, to save Allan's brother, to show people you could protect those who helped you, or take the way out Allan gave you – let them hang. Your men didn't know about your injury, how you could never come that close to killing, but you did consider. You were on the mend. Next time will be the push you need. And then Marian had the choice of confessing to save the captain. Surrender spying for you and the political match for Nottingham to save an innocent man. She did not. She saw further than you did, but she didn't know how to save everyone. What would it have taken? Questions we do not ask, but they might have helped, in the end, with Marian's assassination attempt. Didn't matter anyway, because the bride with the necklace was silly enough to wear it, and when Gisborne saw it she told him it was from you.

And when Gisborne told the Sheriff he was so darkly pleased he descended into prophecy, the cold hard knife in a back, twisting. And he had his own bit of trickery to play. Tom-a-Dale stole the necklace back but he hung an hour early, just so the Sheriff could tell you about how the hope went out of their eyes – he had finally found the victory that would break you. Because he didn't know how you would put yourself back together.

Djaq took Allan into her heart, unconditionally, and told him and Will about her twin brother who died in the Crusades, whose name she had taken. Robin or Much could have killed him for all she knew. But she decided to love them, make them her new family, and she made Allan her brother in arms most of all. Which is why she was first to forgive him, in the end. Because when he was broken, he forgave you. Because in the depths of his despair, in the crushing pain of his loss, he saw the necklace and thought immediately to save Marian for you. Things to remember in times to come, Robin, Allen-a-Dale is a good man. Djaq can tell you.

Gisborne was descending on Marian with a fury, knocking aside her father, nearly strangling her with his bare hands, demanding the truth. And when she ran out of lies she nearly gave it to him, but at the window – the same window where you came for advice, the same window where you tried to kiss her and she pushed you away with a smile – you put the necklace into her hand.

So Guy of Gisborne said he would save her – but only by marrying her. And she was surprised and frightened, because she hadn't realized that political games mean marriages as alliances. And you listened as she finally agreed to marry Guy of Gisborne the day King Richard returned to England, the day Robin Hood lore gives as your wedding day.

She told many such lies, to still Gisborne's fury, but the falsest was that she would never marry you.


	9. 18 Tattoo? What Tattoo?

**I.8 Tattoo? What Tattoo?**

**The Mark of Cain**

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You still dream of the Holy Land, of the last man you killed before your injury – and of the man who gave it to you – whose face you never saw but whose arm you marked with a slash across his tattoo. Much saw you awake and knew you had been in Acre. All he ever wanted was to help you, share this burden with you. It is the basis of his whole identity now: he was with you in Acre.

Gisborne was tacky enough to hold a party in your house for the King's birthday – in the house of the man who stopped him from killing the King. So you robbed it, cheered everyone up, especially the despondent Marian and Sir Edward. And it was just a bonus that you could slide Gisborne's engagement ring off her finger.

But then you had a nightmare waking, you saw the Mark of Cain upon Gisborne's arm, and Djaq had to drag you away, which left Gisborne free to knock her out. And you barely even noticed you had betrayed one of your men. And you nearly betrayed them all, because when Gisborne mocked that he did try to kill the King you tried to kill him – a remarkable recovery. Your men had to stop you. That's what you taught them: we do not kill. They didn't know your rigidity was at least half the fact that you were injured.

You couldn't see what was going on. Will was the first to notice Djaq was gone – you saw her fall. She was in the dungeons, using explosives or "heathen magic" to bust out of the cell unsuccessfully – then getting put to work to make more for the Sheriff. Because sometimes he really doesn't get it. She made a smoke bomb and used it to escape, just in time to spare the half-baked plan of your men from total failure by meeting them halfway. They needed you, Robin, and you were too busy playing in the forest with Gisborne the traitor – and you were acting so crazy no one believed you. Even Marian thought this was about the engagement.

Your men told you trials and justice were what you used to bring them back to life, couldn't believe you would jeopardize that. You were about to commit a kind of suicide – descend from hero to a dead man – and they just wanted to get Djaq. She was all they cared about. They loved Djaq more than England. Royston White fought for Robin Hood and _then_ King Richard. They would come to understand in time. But for now, both Allan and Will professed love for her.

They tied you up just like you had Gisborne and set Much to watch you. Hoping he could talk to you about what was going on. And Robin put it in better terms for Much – the problems in Nottingham, the massacres they both saw in the Holy Land, they're all still happening because of Guy of Gisborne and his allies. But it was still revenge, not a solution. And you said they saw it differently because they'd been dead men too long, but then you called Much stupid, Much who stood beside you in Acre, and you nearly destroyed everything in your suicide attempt – nearly completed the work Gisborne began when he struck you in the Holy Land, rather than healing it.

And Gisborne spoke a question we do not ask. What kind of King abandons his people to his monstrous brother to kill people for their land, which was Holy Land to them as well? What kind of lord leaves his people at the mercy of the Sheriff to be a Crusader? What would the people think if they could see you now? You fought each other with fists for that. And he mocked you when you tried to explain why you couldn't kill.

And, in Nottingham, everyone got out of the castle except Djaq, the last one out again, and oh, she was hurt that you hadn't come, had barely cared. She sprung the trap you never would have fallen for – she kept your suicide from destroying everything you had built in Sherwood, from killing all the men you brought back to life. And the first person who asked after her, and the first person she asked after, was Will Scarlett.

And the last thing Guy and you talk about is Marian. And low and behold, there she is, fetched by Much because he was never enough for you back in England. Because he always knew that you need, even if it kills him. So the two of you talked about how you had to watch her stand as Gisborne's future wife, and she told you how Guy was sick for weeks. But she didn't believe you either, you were acting so crazy. You even hit her hard, with an accusation you didn't know was horribly true, hit her in the political games she sacrificed a man for just last week. You didn't know how hard you were hitting her.

Your men were furious that you cared more about Gisborne than Djaq, whom the Sheriff had realized was a girl, and Marian found a way to solve the problem – your men would forgive you if you traded Guy for Djaq. Little John knocked you out when you refused. While you were asleep, Marian cried to the Sheriff to save Guy, and he was mean but he agreed.

The Sheriff sprang a trap, but even without Hood the outlaws weren't stupid. And you nearly spoiled everything one last time, but you came and made things right. Then the Sheriff burned off Sir Guy's tattoo

And in Sherwood Forest, Djaq, who also knew what Gisborne cost both your peoples, let them all save you and forgive you. So you ate a turkey leg and lived.

And Marian was learning well the harshest of the truths you told her in your anger: everything is a choice, and she had chosen Gisborne over banishment. She rationalized many times, even cruelly when you pushed her, but the hardest show of love she gave Gisborne was not for him. It was your life and your soul she was saving when she went in tears to the Sheriff.


	10. 19 A Thing or Two About Loyalty

**I.9 A Thing Or Two About Loyalty**

**What If They Win?**

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You lost the last two rounds. You gave them Marian and Allan's brother, and they nearly took your soul and men – your reputation too. Don't make it a habit. You can't afford to lose this round.

Because we're really playing with fire now. Greek Fire – we'd call them grenades and bombs, firepower. Something scary this way comes. And the lamb that brings the wolves? An inventor, Lambert, is like the scientists who will create the atom bomb. He was just there for science, progress, mining techniques that would keep the workers from dying. And he made a death trap. The weapon of the ages.

And he realizes much too late that he can't trust the Sheriff. You bump into him and try to help him, but he runs from you too. Don't sell to either side of the war. Lambert got squeezed from every angle – Guy's pleading, the Sheriff's torture, Much's aborted rescue attempt, Marian's manipulations, and finally your honor. You pledged to keep it safe. He was afraid he would break and tell the madman, so he risked the outlaw. When he did, the Sheriff killed him, saying he wondered if you knew him at all. Did you? These are questions we do not ask, but they might have helped, later, with the Black Knights.

Everyone got to work without the usual amount of hijinks, because this could be the last battle, if you lost. All the troops were arrayed, and no one was messing around – with any of it. Loyalty was the watchword, because they already knew there were spies. And Lambert started it, he made it all about trust.

You and Marian and you and your men fought over whether or not to destroy it once you had it – Djaq saved it in the end, even though you eventually decided to burn it after all. That will help later, with the mercenaries. But that was nothing to how Marian fought with Guy about how to save Lambert. In the end, she cried in your arms because he died. She blamed Guy, but she probably should have blamed you. Your wound was healing. Things we don't mention, especially because she felt right in your arms, and she held your hand in the camp.

And Much, oh Much, the Sheriff tried to play him like he wasn't your most devoted friend, like he wasn't the one who stood beside you at Acre. Gave him the earldom of Bonchurch, which you had promised him in the Holy Land, and there Much found much embarrassment – and Eve. She was the Sheriff's spy, of course, but she had never met anyone as wonderful as Much – who has? So she told the Sheriff a lie when Much told her the truth, and he gave her all his riches the way he cared for his people the brief time he had them. Even immersed in the bath he moaned about for months, he told his beloved he belonged with you in the Forest. You told him he was important. Good. He doesn't hear that enough – that would have helped, in the end, with the Kalila and Dimna.

Because this is all about loyalty – because it's the atom bomb and suddenly the alliances are moving full steam ahead, risking betrayals, and (especially for the Sheriff with Gisborne, especially you with Much) risking showing some affection and devotion. Because this is for keeps.

So with Eve's help, you and Much – just like the bad old days in the Holy Land when Much felt more needed and loved than he ever had, even with Eve – tricked the Sheriff and Gisborne into showing you where the stockpile of black powder was so you could destroy the last of it. Congratulations, you won. It could have been the end of the game if you hadn't.

And Marian played Guy many ways, to that all-important end, but the most effective and the one she did with the greatest ease was when she took off his engagement ring.


	11. 110 Peace? Off!

**I.10 Peace? Off!**

**The Crusades of England**

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The Crusades came to England, hoping to make it stop. They didn't realize that England didn't care what was happening in the Holy Land. It was preparing to win the end of the war, and fighting its own battle for its own hallowed ground. The first is a Crusader gone mad with killing and torture and brainwashing by the enemy. You rescued him from a town furious that he was burning their church – as if burning away all holy land would make it stop. You put him in Much's care, because he had cared for you, and to whom else do you trust a broken Crusader?

And a prince from the Holy Land came to England hoping to negotiate a peace treaty with Prince John, younger brother to younger brother. He came to the Sheriff who thought he could hold him hostage, and the Caliph sent a crew of female assassins to kill him. He only wanted it to stop, and neither the Holy Land nor England would let the killing stop. Both stood to lose too much. The prince would negotiate peace at any cost. What you wanted too, you have very little left to lose. Or so you thought, until you took England's fight to the Holy Land. You might have learned your lesson here, with the Crusades taking their battle to your beloved Nottingham, before you took yours there.

Lots of cultural mistranslation – some of it intentional. The Sheriff mistook diplomacy for stupidity – like he does – when the prince was polite about the slops he was served. And in the Forest there was something bigger going on – the prince's acupuncture helmet looked evil to your men and even Djaq doubted it could be for anything good. The Lost Crusader freaked the hell out and tried to kill her, and Much still stood by him, of course. Like he always would you. But it hurt him whenever the Lost Crusader struck out in his madness, just like when you pulled away from his love. Things we don't talk about. Until Kalila.

The prince insisted on pressing on, not aware that he was a hostage, and the Sheriff locked him up to make it clear. And Little John refused to leave the tree on which he'd drawn his own holy sign – but the truest thing Gisborne and the Sheriff ever said was that his wasn't a holy war, this wasn't England's war. The helmet was about science, not magic. We don't have to fight. We wouldn't have to, if we listened to the Saracen prince, but he spoke all the things we don't talk about – people we don't listen to men like him. You tried, but you were his opposite in England, not Prince John. And everyone wants you both dead. Both sides, eventually. Things we don't talk about, but it might have helped, in the end – with King Richard's mistake.

When you had him in the Forest, he knew just the words to make you send him back on his fool's mission – "let the blood of thousands be on your head." You still couldn't quite kill, the injury stopped bleeding but it could still rupture if stretched.

This wasn't your time to heal. It was the Lost Crusader's. He's what you used to get your gang to rescue the prince from the assassins sent to stop him from making peace. In the end, it was the Lost Crusader – who had been tortured and changed by the very women who came to England to deal death – who jumped between his captors and their prince. He saved a Saracen prince to reclaim his soul from the darkness of Saracen magic and the prince repaid him with the Saracen science of healing. Both sides have darkness and light. That's what a religious war means.

In the Crusades of England, even the Sheriff and you were, for a moment, on the same side. It destroys everything in England, even the sides of your own battle.

The prince took you aside and gave you a piece of hope for the end of the battle in the Holy Land. You and God are on his side. Much of England and the Prince of the Saracens saved the Lost Crusader, maybe you and he can save the Holy Land and both your homes.

And Gisborne was useless both helping the Sheriff with the prince and trying to buy Marian, who wasn't much better. She didn't understand the Holy Land fight, never did, and you were glad of it, because you didn't know it would cost you her. She took her new horse many places, something of her own to take her anywhere she wanted, all she ever wanted a man to give her, but the first place she went was to see you.


	12. 111 Dead Man Walking

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**A/N:** Hey, so, if you're reading, could you let me know? I hate fishing for reviews, but I have an unofficial policy not to post if that would make more chapters than reviews. It just seems silly - especially when I have so much to do. This is one of my favorites though. Enjoy!

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**I.11 Dead Man Walking**

**What About Those Left Behind?**

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John Little had a wife. Alice, whose tongue you saved when he had you by the throat. And he had a son, also called John, crippled by the Sheriff's men when he ran out looking for his father, whose first words to his father brought him back to life under your flag. John Little died, and was a dead man in the forest while his wife and son suffered under the yoke in the village. He left them unprotected, he left them unsupported, he left them uncertain and alone. And you let him. Things we do not talk about.

Until now.

The Sheriff and Gisborne went to new heights collecting taxes, drained everyone dry and filled their dungeons so full of those who could not pay they had to chain prisoners to a tree outside. The first you saw them visit were the Littles: Alice, Tiny John, and the man who wants to marry her and help Tiny John become a man. He asks Alice to marry him, they can make the taxes together. But not yet, and when Gisborne's goons look for tools to make up the value – who will they sell them to when they've put all the craftsmen out of business? – they find your bows. And Little John goes mad when they take his boy prisoner. He tries to rescue him single-handed and is taken, a wild man who lived dead in the Forest. He came back to life, but it wasn't the one he had before.

And his punishment was hard. The jewel of the Sheriff's Festival of Pain, though Vaisey never knew it. And I don't mean putting John in stocks in the dungeon. I mean watching his son and his son's new father in the next cell, offering to teach him how to shoot a bow, telling him it would be all right, holding him in his arms. And later, his wife completing the new family, taking the new father in her arms. No torture so great for her either, as when she saw his face. John and his son could barely touch reaching through the bars. And Tiny John was awfully proud of his new father, but he spoke like John Little. The man Alice called a dead man. She was so beautiful and so brave as she told him he didn't have to die, that he'd made that choice. Everything is a choice, remember that? She wouldn't listen when her told her how he came back to life. She shouted that he should have stayed dead, better for everyone. The Jewel of the Sheriff's Festival. The rest was a formality.

You and the rest of the gang swarmed all over the castle trying to find a way to rescue him, but you couldn't save him from the choices he had made. No one could. A man loses his life when he chooses to die, even if a man like you can bring him back to life. And there's the taxes they worked so hard to extract leaving for Prince John at the same time. You've got to let them win one, at least so they thought. Don't they know yet – the more balls they have in the air the more tools you have to play against them. You don't make plans, you make chaos.

You switched the tax money with grains of flour while the Sheriff set up his own show – a torture device of devilish proportions. His son forgave John, and even Alice joined in, when they were all dead and in hell together. But it couldn't last in Heaven, once you had set them free. Will, in with the prisoners, passed around a lockpick, and the Sheriff literally raked the new Little Family over the coals until the twice dead patriarch sprang back to life once again to save them – breaking his bonds. Alone this time, although you were there.

Gisborne figured out the trick just too late, but you already had the money. You spilled it into the laps of the Sheriff's audience and they swarmed over it as the prisoners broke free. Little John swore the Sheriff was the dead man, and Alice stayed his hand. Come back to life, don't become a demon to haunt her all over again. Little John's soul was so much easier to save.

And Little John said goodbye to the new Little Family, which left Locksley as they would have done for John if he hadn't died the first time. Your family saw them off, safe and well enough to start a new life. Little John regained his life, but lost something more precious. The life he had before. The opposite of Tiny John's new father.

There is a cost to all of our choices. Even Robin Hood cannot undo that. Not even for Little John.

And Marian ran around trying to get Gisborne to see that the Festival of Pain was the Sheriff's cruelest piece of theatre yet, without a clue that it was Gisborne's idea. She helped a lot, justifying the games she played with Gisborne for the information she could feed you, though she drew the line at "spending more time together." And the Sheriff talked a lot about how visible her bleeding heart was, but the clearest moment was when the smile on her face blossomed the moment she heard your voice.


	13. 112 The Return of the King

**I.12 Return of the King**

**What Now?**

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There's a reason, in Robin Hood lore, that King Richard always arrives by surprise. The idea of him coming is enough to wreck everything. Especially when Marian said she would marry Gisborne on the day Robin Hood lore gives as your wedding day.

What Much didn't understand – he thought the troubles were over. He'd come to think the King's Return was magic. Everyone else knew better. Even Gisborne and the Sheriff weren't worried. They'd been waiting, just like you. Much was so happy, but he was the only one – you all had your reasons, something precious you stood to lose. Little John would shatter if his second family were removed. Allen was terrified of losing his life, of having nothing at the end of this adventure. A servant/con man, like his dead brother again. Will feared losing his purpose, returning to his family with nothing, losing his heroic status – what absolved him of leaving his own family as John had done. Djaq would lose what tied her to this foreign soil, and the boy she was beginning to love here. You would lose Marian.

Gisborne went to Marian and showed her his wealth, and told her everything he could that was true. He was a man of substance, a man of lineage, though not a man of integrity. He didn't understand what would really impress Marian. You told her not to visit your house until it was yours again. She said many hard won truths, many terrible realities, but the most desperate was when she begged you not to make this harder than it already was. And you said many things to her, the most fateful was that she was the Night Watchman and shouldn't care about anything Guy had to offer. Because you didn't know that it would lead to the first time you lost her. And oh, how she loved you that day, how you loved her, the day your love burned at its most excruciating.

Even Sir Edward withdrew his protection from Marian, who had been protecting him for a long time. He was gathering a coalition to protect the king, the culmination of the long game he carried out quietly amidst your antics.

Allen and Will weren't looking forward to being servant and carpenter. Djaq didn't mention going home. Little John just prayed it was a rumor, nothing more. Much talked on and on about coming out of the shadows at last. A doctor lied for Gisborne so he could go to the Holy Land to assassinate the king to prevent any of this nonsense from ever happening. He admitted it to you, feigning ignorance of the rest, but he was less innocent than you thought.

Marian made a plan to steal her own wealth as the future Lady Gisborne, trying to make it a less onerous title for a woman like her to bear. The Night Watchman went to Locksley, and you went to Knighton to see her, and knew exactly where she'd gone. She was lucky, because Guy caught her. You saved her, of course, but Gisborne stabbed her as you fled. It was bad enough the first time, but you didn't know it was the second of three times – the alchemy of her murder. Until he had finally taken her from you as he taunted he would do in marriage so many times.

So you carried her away in your arms and promised her in the Forest you would make it right. But you didn't know about the second strike, the second time Gisborne marked her with his blade, didn't know about the things you couldn't make right. Something you'd never want to talk about again, and it wouldn't have saved her anyway. You joked that this Night Watchman business would be the death of her, because you did not know yet – it was a prophecy already in the making. You exalted to her about her freedom, and the most untrue thing she had ever told you was her response, "I do not know how to thank you." Then she collapsed in front of you.

You carried her to the cave in your arms, and John and Djaq swarmed around her as you stared in horror. Losing her was never meant to be more than a joke, but you shouldn't have cursed yourself. You whispered to her the same words as when she tended your wound, and neither of you knew she was healing your old injury as you clucked over her newest one.

And as you worried, Will and Allan got so afraid of what would happen when you didn't need them anymore that they ran off with "severance pay." Allen's idea of course. Never knew Marian was in trouble, just went to Will's old family and Allen's new family, in Scarborough. Allan latched on to the Scarletts when he lost the Merry Men, and they took Gisborne's money to the family destined to be his victims. Things we didn't hold against them, things we didn't talk about again. But they might have helped, later, with Gisborne's thirty pieces of silver. And Dan Scarlett's Last Stand.

You repented your quarrel when Marian needed surgery. Djaq told darling Much to pray to his god and hers, she was always careful to hedge her bets that way, because she thought your Marian was going to die. The trouble is that Marian knew when Much came in and wouldn't meet her eyes. So she told you many things, all the things she needed to say, all the things she'd told you in code for so long, pulling away at her bedroom window. The biggest was that you and she never stopped lying – she thought you a hero and she would pledge all of her last words to you, to tell you how she loved you. Because she knew it might be a promise, but she didn't know it would follow her beyond this scare. And you finally said the things you needed to say as well – that you never should have left, that you would change everything in your entire life if it meant you had never lost her. And then you held her as Djaq operated.

Until Djaq was afraid of failing, unprepared for surgery as a doctor's apprentice-daughter. So you ran for the physician, who dropped "breadcrumbs" to your cave which the Sheriff and Gisborne followed, taunting. Because they thought you couldn't kill, so they were safe. Just like Pitts, who told you Marian was dead without fear for his life. Gave her poison without fear.

Just like the rest of you had no fear, when the Sheriff and Gisborne trapped you all in a cave. And he killed his doctor, as if he knew, but seeing her lying there, as you pressed her cold hand to your lips, tears fell from your eyes like the grief of a phoenix. She healed the injury Gisborne gave you in the Holy Land. And all you could do was call her name, and of all the things you breathed that you should have said, the first and last was, "I love you." The one thing you really never needed to say.

And the Sheriff of Nottingham called, because he didn't know you'd just been healed.

So, what now, Robin? Keep in mind, you'll be asked this question again.


	14. 113 A Clue: No

**I.13 A Clue: No**

**Can You Tolerate This?**

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The first half of your story was a series of questions, testing the waters and the rules and the limits of your strength and soul and mind. You answered them to earn this moment – your answers have their price here. They were the right ones. This is their cost.

A series of choices.

The first choice is the same one youve struggled with since Acre, suddenly made easy: to kill or not to kill. Your men and Gisborne show surprise, but they ascribe it to Marian – her death or impending marriage. But the Sheriff has the right idea. He keeps screaming it over and over again. _Hood does not kill_. Perhaps not, since you became Hood. They should have seen you in the Holy War – Guy of Gisborne has. Much knows. Robin of Locksley does kill.

So decisively do you and your merry men decimate the mighty force sent against you that you change the game forever. You make it less violent, ironically, for a time. And the Sheriff sends away to London for more concrete protection. When they see what you, a Crusader, Captain of the Kings Personal Guard, can do to them, they learn never to send men against you in this way again. You win the Forest, pay for it with the blood of only semi-guilty guards and Marian herself. Your testing has been hard, this is a gift, a time when even your uglier impulses are blessed to turn out for the best. But you didnt know that. You still made the choices. Theyll get bigger guns eventually – questions we do not bring up at blessed times, but they might have helped later, with the Sheriffs mercenaries. With Archers weapons.

Allen and Will return just in time to rescue you by making the attackers believe you had reinforcements. Even now they number your men in the dozens. At least. And everyone treated them like the death of Marian was their fault, even Will. His tears and shame are great, but they didnt even register with you until later. It was Will and Allen you trusted least in the days to come – you took dogtags from both of them. It was Djaq who called them home. Allen was always afraid, a con man thrown among heroes just playing the greatest of his many parts. Things we do not hold against him, until we do. It would have helped later, with Gisbornes offer. Will brought the money for his family, he has a home besides yours. Things we do not ask you to talk about at a time like this, with Marian lying there, but they might have helped later, with Dan Scarletts last stand.

And it is Allen, this bean counter thrown among the Age of Heroes, waiting anxiously as always for the moment the other shoe drops, who lost his brother to your personal game with the Sheriff, who puts an end to the ritual of Marians Wake – the stilted words trying to wrap themselves around the huge idea of her, the love of her, the truth of her – give her honor and love and everything she deserved. All broken voices so full of love and honor the words must be simple. Allen-a-Dale, not a minstrel at all, who screamed he was from Locksley then pleaded to be from Dale, says – not being funny – that shes breathing. And Djaq supplies the explanation for the miracle you didnt care about as Marian woke up, her face coming alive again under your reverent hands. This is a blessed time you have earned. The Age of Heroes isnt over, the conman bean counter says to Englands greatest legend, it never is. The Time of Miracles is now. The Time of Miracles is always now.

And your tears flowed, the physical proof of the love you couldnt say in time. She still needed to hear the words – the one thing she always knew she didnt have to doubt. The thing you both spent the next day pretending didnt matter. Not in the way real things like politics and kings and assassinations and promises made under duress mattered. Love doesnt matter the same way. It matters more. And less. Thats a choice. Its the last choice. This is the first time youre asked.

You took her back to her fathers. As she would have wanted. And elsewhere, the Sheriff laughed at Guy of Gisborne for thinking that the King of England would make his first stop in Nottingham. Robin Hood lore led us to ignore this. And Sir Guy balked at marrying Marian under false pretenses. After all the sins on his heart, this is what gets to him. Ironic, ridiculous even. He ran to set Marian free, as you brought her home to her self-designed prison.

You all had to hide when Gisborne arrived, furious when he thought Marian had sprung the cage – forgetting he came to open the door. I knew she would not go through with it, could almost break a heart for Sir Guy. Even he always knew she loved you. And he stood over the woman he had broken, murmuring that everything would be fine. You held yourself out of his sight but within hers, precariously hidden, making the playacting hard on her as always. Her father lied that she was excited to get him to leave before he saw you – to keep you all alive – and Sir Guy rationalized his lie. Tell her, I am also excited. Nearly telling her was all the proof she never wanted that he does love her. It made it so much harder on her, that his feelings for her were genuine. You didnt care, but it is a terrible thing to take away the one true, beautiful thing a person has ever felt. It was a choice she made every day until her last – easier than crushing him once and for all, like it was easier to let him torture and kill his Captain rather than confess her betrayal. Much good it did her in the end. Much good it did her the instant the Sheriff became involved. A prophecy for her second death, but we need not talk about it at this blessed time.

You promised her she wouldnt ever have to marry him. Only half of what she needed to hear from you. She needed the words that broke Gisborne, but no one was ready to speak those blessed words yet. You were right to be afraid of them, though you didnt know what they would cost.

And her father ripped you into the hallway and demanded if you could really save her. When you said you had no plan – like you ever have a plan this early in the game – he told you to back off and protect the King. Richard over Marian. England over Locksley, though you hadnt phrased it that way yet. Marians father begged what Marian would beg of you: do the right thing. The smart thing. For England. And you spat in the old mans face the crazy words, I am sick of doing the right thing. Which was odd, because I cant remember you ever doing the right thing as Sir Edward would define it – except trading Djaq for Gisborne, which took a hell of a lot of pushing. Thats how this game started. Sir Edwards Long Game was about to culminate, and he wanted the crazy rogue Crusader woodsman on his side. Theres a point where all politics is about force and whether or not you can kill. Sir Edward thought his plan could ever have succeeded, because he didnt remember he was outplayed from the start.

Much came to talk to you, as you stared over the life you could believe, for a moment, Guy of Gisborne could ever steal from you. Because you knew: the people of Locksley were yours, yes, but only because Marian was yours. They received her as mistress at Guys party, and thats when they finally started treating Guy like a master rather than a tenant, however much they would have preferred you. She was Night Watchman long before you were Robin Hood, they are her people even more than they are yours. She is the life, and Guy is taking her from you. But he never could by marrying her, its so stupid to think it would happen like this, but then, none of you guessed how he would take her away in the end.

And Much poised the question: What is Locksley if England is destroyed? At this moment, Everything. Because what good is England if the cost is Locksley?

Questions youll have to answer. Both ways, someday. Marian or Richard? Locksley or England? Youve earned this blessed time when you can make the micro choice without the macro cost. Someday you will pay the price for it, but we dont have to talk about that now, in this blessed time.

Marian went among her men when she could stand. Did not ask her father for protection but loved him despite his choice – the opposite of yours. King Richard over Lady Marian. Then to Sir Guy, to hear the words come out of his mouth and pretend he had never lied to her. Perhaps he hadnt. She drew back from his kiss but decided to marry him, because she loved King Richard more than herself – or she couldnt justify her own happiness over the healing of England. She had been here in this sick, broken land longer. Then she told you and tried to make you see and couldnt make you fight her on this issue. And she chased you out of Locksley. Thinking it would make you fight for England, but you only sat outside looking in and tried to leave – as if you ever could. But this time is blessed; even your failings turn out well.

Your merry men tried to go protect the King without you, and of course Much – their only hope in ways they knew and ways they didnt without you there – couldnt do it without you and ran off. He saw the false King roll into Nottingham without knowing him, and he made the same choice: Locksley or Nottingham? Marian or Edward? Thats the one he said aloud, and its much easier to make the choice now. Nottingham is smaller than England, and already corrupt. Edward is old and doomed in any case. But Locksley and Marian are still young and beautiful and precious and necessary – He needs you! Much screamed in a display which must have killed him – and even your selfish choices now are blessed.

So Much stormed the wedding and was held at the door because of course he could not enter the doors of the church where the false wedding was taking place on the false return of the king Robin Hood lore gives as your wedding day. He rang the bell and screamed the truth, and Sir Guy wouldnt lie in a church to Marians face.

But you have to take a moment, and go back, to understand why. Why this, of all things, is the sin which takes Marian and Locksley from him. After Lambert. After his captain. After the proposal. After the guard he killed in cold blood before her eyes. After stabbing her and nearly killing her. After Acre. Because he told your steward that he had committed crimes – terrible crimes – but Marians pure heart would wash away his sins. He put his salvation on her pure soul, a blank canvas to absorb his sin and cover his transgressions. And if he didnt misunderstand her and redemption so completely, it might have worked for him – if he let the repentance stick. Instead he just dipped what he imagined was his clean slate into mud, from the start. And when she started to bolt in anger he kept her at the altar through blackmail.

He needs you! could have meant either or any of her men, and Much was a greater man than you in this moment for saying it. You heard his cries and his bells. And Marian punched Sir Guy with his wedding ring and ran. Because even if he had been right about who she was, and how redemption works, he couldnt let repentance stand. She could never have saved him. So she was free.

That is a lie, but we do not talk about it during this blessed time. And its really almost ridiculous that this is what denies him Marian after everything, but it is also, somehow, the grossest thing he has done. At least in front of her. Until then, at least.

And because this is a blessed time, you rode your horse into Locksley at precisely the right moment. And she tore into the streets and her smile in a wedding dress was radiant as she called out I do! to you, this man and this horse, taken as her route out of here. And all of Locksley must have seen her leave, with their rightful lord, and none would ever tell this story to Sir Guy of Gisborne. Your happiest. Because she loved them while you were away, through all of Gisbornes abuses, three years before you returned. He would have gotten Locksley by making Marian Lady Gisborne. But you saved Locksley from him, you were blessed to make that choice.

Your victory in Nottingham was not so complete, but it felt good. Sir Edward saved, technically at least, the Sheriff outed, his mischief and fun spoiled, Vaisey himself hung from the ceiling flailing – far less impotent than he looked – and your men marched away into the Forest, happy and whole and freed from the terrible questions Allen had immediately begun to pose when we thought Richard came to Nottingham. All the rest of your men forgot them for a time, but not Allen. Things we do not talk about in this blessed time.

We will soon.

But this is a blessed time and we will not talk of thin victories or enraged Gisbornes or deserting men or the cost of choosing Locksley and winning – or even the lingering question of Locksley or England. Because this is a blessed time. And the greatest blessing was this: your victory was sealed with a kiss.


	15. Part Two: Locksley or England?

**Part Two**

**Locksley or England?**

**

* * *

  
**

The same question. Over and over again. Asked a hundred different ways, answered a hundred different ways, by everyone. All the things we did not talk about – their time is coming. The game has changed. It was a punchline before, and a weapon. Now it's aimed at every breast in Nottingham: Everything is a choice.

Everything is _this _choice.


	16. 21 Sisterhood

**II.1 Sisterhood**

**The End of the Game**

* * *

Everyone is something to someone. Something you would do well to remember. You are a lot of things to a lot of people. Something you might remember before casually faking your death.

And right away you got whipped for it. The dominatrix lady in the forest gave you her trinkets but fought back – quite well – when you went near her "babies." Even Indiana Jones hates snakes. He's another hero, but less noble than you – more like Allen, who we'll get to later. "I don't want to hurt you," you told her. Doesn't mean you won't. And she's something to someone.

"It's time to disappear," you shouted, and everyone fell back to your stable camp, hidden in leaves, invisible. A home for Much, who was overjoyed. A place to rest and nest. Now that you won the forest in the Battle of Marian's Death.

And in the castle, the Sheriff said it all: "Tell me you would rather have a woman, Gisborne, than all this." He'll try, by the end, but not for a long while yet. And, in the end, he'll never say that. Especially now that their power is increasing. They're head of the Black Knights, setting about to kill King Richard and put a new king, deeply in their debt, on the throne. And Sir Guy chooses, goes to arrest Marian and Edward. Burns their house right to the ground, as Marian shouts in pain. The house where her mother lived, where her mother died. Without which her father will die soon.

You realized in the forest that the woman you attacked was the Sheriff's someone. His sister, actually, and they were cute together in a way evil people shouldn't be, unless they're allowed to be people too. Everyone is a person too. Their names are Vaisey and Davita.

Marian and Edward were brought to the castle and asked, who's side are you on: the Sheriff's or King Richard's? Again and again, the Sheriff asks the pertinent question. Yet he still ends up with the greatest loss this round. Marian and her father were put under house arrest in the castle. And all Marian's "Guy!"s could not change it, because she left him at the altar. There are consequences to her freedom.

And Allen was getting tired of your holier-than-thou games. He was never a hero, he was a conman you found in the dungeons who tried to trick his way free and ended up tricking himself into a noose and when you saved him the second time he was stuck. He left before, took all of Gisborne's money and went to attach himself to Will's family like a leech with a new host – because he's lonely and he doesn't trust the forest family to stick, at least for him. His brother died because you were late to Nottingham – the only person you've ever not saved is his brother. You almost didn't go at all, the only person you've ever considered not rescuing is Tom-a-Dale. Allen's a man who needs things, and he's watched you take everything you want then demand your gang lay down their lives to defend it. Even when you're forgetting to do your charitable rounds. And you won't even let him pick up a few spare pieces of silver for himself at the tavern. He can't be like Much, and that's what he's afraid he's being asked to become now, because you'll never love him like you love Much. And there's only one Bonchurch. All the things we do not talk about.

Until now.

Sir Guy is a man scorned, just getting to enjoy the Sheriff's vindictive games. He is a man scorned not just by Marian. By the Sheriff ten times a day. By the Prince he serves with a joke of a title – by his men who laugh that there is no Gisborne for him to be lord of. By the people of Locksley who still belong to you. By God, who took away his one chance to save his soul. He just wants respect, he just wants to win one. You've taken everything from him, because you had a spy in his camp. Things we've talked about before, but it's still worth a moment. He is a very dangerous man. And his story is about to collide with Allen's.

Sir Guy caught Allen in the taverns pulling tricks. You landed him in the dungeons, and Gisborne let him out for harmless bits of information. Not the camp, not Marian, not your death, just a plot spoiled here and a double bluff there. So Gisborne can win one. Allen gave him his brother's name, bluffing in the dungeons just as his brother did if only he knew it, and Guy spoke his secret fear – sooner or later, Robin will realize he's no hero and kick him out. Allen's lie: he looks like that man in Robin's gang, but that's not who he is. Sooner or later everyone will realize it's the truth. Then he'll be left in the torture chamber of the Sheriff. He will, he's about to pass through the first locked gate. After torture, he makes a deal with the devil's accolite, who just wants to win one now and again. Because he just wants something for himself at the end of this, and he doesn't really believe it will be your friendship.

You were circling the castle looking for news of Marian, then looking as the Black Knights began to gather, looking as the scoundrels of England gathered to plan their dastardly deeds. But a woman named Rose stood in the marketplace, and two children were going to have their hands cut off. Everything is a choice; it was a ruse and now you're caught and you can't stop the Black Knights. The Sheriff's sister was the peasant woman, and now she lowered you slowly into the pit of her snakes. And before, the real torture. What you traded away to save the false Rose: the assassination plot of the Black Knights, mobilizing all over England to kill King Richard as he returns home.

"We are the new England." That's the Sheriff's proclamation, and it's true. That's why it needs saving more than Locksley, which will always belong to you. "I've enjoyed our little skirmishes." But this is the war. "There are people like me and the Night Watchmen all over England." Your retort, yes, that England will rise up. But only by choosing that over Locksley. Everything is a choice. Now you realize how important they are.

Marian came to your rescue, creating a distraction as everyone watched you die. They left you alone, and you began to wriggle out of the pit inch by inch. When you finally got your bow in your hands, we all knew everything would be all right. Except for the Sheriff's someone, his beloved sister. And your someone tried to hide but didn't do it well enough and had to keep fighting and running. Take a note, Marian. The Sheriff said it all, as is his habit now, "You should have run when you had the chance." But everything is a choice. And they realized why Marian didn't run, and scurried back too late. The Sheriff's sister died in her snake pit instead of you. And the Sheriff told Marian you were already dead. You are her someone, it nearly broke her.

When she took you in her arms, later, she could breathe again. She chose Locksley over England once, as you did. Risked leaving England and Nottingham without any protector at all, to save your precious life. Now she's got to earn that, the same way you do. In the castle, she's your spy. That's worth more to Richard and England than your joint happiness in the Forest.

The Sheriff's sister laughed at you before she died, asked if you were going to save England single-handedly. They have ten thousand men, and now you "five or six" have a mission. Did you know – when you said it – that the number was already being winnowed down from six to five? How could you? You hadn't thought of Allen for days, maybe even weeks. Certainly not the hours he's been in the dungeons.

And the Sheriff's sister told you: the Sheriff sent away for new protection, now that you could kill. If he dies, every man, woman, child, house, village, horse and field in Nottingham will be destroyed. Wiped off the map. So this is the new story of Robin Hood. Every day, the Sheriff wakes up and plans to kill the King. And every day, you wake up and decide not to kill him, despite ten thousand chances, because of Nottingham and Locksley. And if the King dies returning to England, and the Black Knights become England as they claim, it will be on your conscience as surely as the innocent children the sister taunts you with now. Because everything is a choice.

But the Sheriff is the first to lose big. You fled as he held the woman he loves more than the world in his arms as she died. They exchanged their final words of love, and you spit at it because you did not understand – it was the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. You did not understand that in legends there is a balance. It was a sign and cause of things to come. Your Mirror is Vaisey, always has been. Davita is Marian's – in position, in kind, in mission, in strength. And in fate.

Everyone has someone they love. Everyone is loved by someone. For the Sheriff and his sister, this is the end of love. Yours is coming, because one way or another that is the revenge the Sheriff will demand for this. This is the moment he is thinking of when he ties her hands behind your back in the desert. This is the end of the game.

Your gang saves you when Gisborne tries to kill you simply, because the humiliation games – all the games – are over. You didn't notice Allen wasn't there. Gisborne did, and he used that to turn the first lock on Allen's new cage. And the conman bean counter trapped in the Age of Heroes gave in at last, after a day of torture and a year of pain and fear and secret loneliness, the game of Robin and the Sheriff was over. Gisborne and Allen are playing, as rivals not enemies, a new game now.

"You are Robin Hood," you told your men, just in time for Allen to return. "We are the Spirit of England," and even if you died, the country could fight on. You should have made this point earlier. Especially if you are going to casually fake your own death – this isn't game anymore, for scraps for the poor. This is for England. What is Locksley to that? Without King Richard, there is no Robin Hood.

And you came to Marian's house, just before Guy burned it, and asked her join your gang, choose you over her father and her life helping the Cause. She gave you many reasons, why it wouldn't work – all good – but the most important was this, "And all for a king who may not be coming back." And that was too much for you, so you just laughed, "So you have been thinking about it." It's all you've been thinking about; it's time to change that. Even though she said yes, just not now. The King needs her in the Castle, and everything is a choice.


	17. 22 The Booby and the Beast

**II.2 Booby and the Beast**

**Again, This Time With Feeling**

**

* * *

  
**

Today Sheriff Vaisey woke up and plotted to kill the King. Today you woke up and did not kill him, because Nottingham would burn. Today you chosen Marian over Richard. Everything is a choice.

So what do you do when the game has changed? You start by simply stepping it up, doing what you do. The taxes were to pay for mercenaries, so now you don't just take enough to feed the poor. You take the lot. Everything that's being collected and the vault in the castle. You win until that point, but the war chest is prickly, hard to grasp, and it's booby trapped out the wazoo.

The Sheriff also had to adjust his plan. Taxes weren't working, so he brought in a rich booby of a nobleman to gamble it all away. To make up what you were stealing. He even dangled Marian as bait, forgetting what she did with Gisborne. She acts disgruntled and ends up liking him – because he's clever and just putting on the act of a rube, and he can fight. Not like her, but well enough. And he knows spying better. So she uses her assignment to escape to the woods with him to see you and together you hatch a plan.

Gisborne killed the builders, so Will took you to their teacher. An old family friend who tells him being with you is not a waste of his skills, but he is angry. A mentor who had a Persian wife, whose things Djaq cannot help touching because they remind her of home. A home she left behind for you. She stays now for Will Scarlett, whose mentor had a Persian wife. Praying it can truly work that way. But even her god is different, and that means everything to her. The secret fear no one tends to, because they do not know how. This is the first piece of her homeland, the first that calls her back. But it was no accident she suddenly put on a dress in the castle after hearing about his Persian wife, even if it did make men "so obvious."

She was impressed with the strongroom though, the way she was always taken with cleverness and progress and innovation. And it was damn impressive – any stone can trigger any arrow and eventually molten lead pouring down to kill you. Sounds like your game with the Sheriff all right. Overall, it was a good thing Marian turned up with the false booby.

Much screamed at you, that the sequence was changed and it was too dangerous. He said, "And if we die that's my England lost." That's a very decent point, and he meant your death. But the Black Knights are coming in the morning for the money that will take their England, from England's own lifeblood taxes. Everything is a choice. And you are good at this, you take away the prize despite all of the Sheriff's multi-layered tricks. But in the morning he will get up and plot to kill the king again, and you will not kill him. To save Nottingham, over England.

And the blind man told you you could have love as well as save England. It might not have been a lie, but it was. But the booby also told you you were a lucky man. And that was no lie at all. Because she'd do anything for you, even hang off the booby's arm.


	18. 23 Childhood

**II.3 Childhood**

**Still Playing Games**

* * *

Today you woke up and you didn't kill the Sheriff. The children of Nottingham did not understand. In their games, you ended the Sheriff's reign of terror with a single arrow from your quiver. They do not understand, like King Richard will not understand. It's not a game anymore. Everything is a choice.

Then the children's games, too, become real, and they see Gisborne's new toy. The Sheriff puts his trust in money and fear and strength of arm. Gisborne in strength of armor, in greek fire. He brings progress, new and better weapons, to the Sheriff as his gift. And the Sheriff laughs right up until the moment they work. I wonder how many of his projects have failed. Now it's indestructible armor, which cannot be allowed. And the children have seen it, so Gisborne takes all but the one playing Robin Hood into custody. You stop the poor little boy from getting himself killed.

And Gisborne's gone soft, because he doesn't kill the children. The man who put his own baby in the woods, who slaughtered a prisoner just a moment ago. Perhaps he knew Marian wouldn't like it. Perhaps he feels the weight of being responsible for his own soul again without her.

Much was your personal bodyguard in the Holy Land, and you were such good friends you made him a lord, an equal. And he fled with you to the Forest complaining because he knew he would never even give it a thought. He keeps the larder stocked, and you mock him that all he catches are squirrels. He does everything you do with more, and he will do it even though he complains, no matter how much you mock. And the boy calls him, "The servant!" And everyone laughs, because Much will be angry but he will take it. Things we do not talk about. Yet.

The Sheriff orders five thousand suits of armor, and the artist who makes it demands only more money and respect. Then Davita's brother orders the children killed, so Gisborne agrees to do it. Chooses Vaisey over the lingering taste of Marian on his lips. Luckily, Will Scarlett is working against the hammering blacksmith and creates a backdoor to the children's prison while you steal Gisborne's black diamonds for the forging process. And you fight with him, yelling about Locksley and whom it belongs to. You win everything but Daniel, the little boy who always gets to be Robin Hood in their games, who couldn't bear to leave someone else behind and saved you. "In the heat of battle, there is time to watch your gang's back." Yes, Robin, there is. Everything is a choice. Remember Allen, who goes to Gisborne tonight with real information for the first time.

Today's untenable choice: the Sheriff cannot have the stones and make his army unbeatable, that's checkmate right there, but you can't let little Daniel die for it. Daniel or King Richard? But you're lucky this once, you find ways to keep from making the choice. Marian tricks the Sheriff into signing a pass to let Daniel out, by saying she's going to see Gisborne, but Allen is the one sent to pick him up. Marian, Guy and Allen keep playing the same game as before. They don't know the way you and the Sheriff do that everything has changed. Marian goes to bat for Guy's soul and is shut down less than he pretends, but more than you liked to see in the window. You should have been watching over Allen, who is now trading the fate of England and an innocent boy for a bag of silver in your house, sure that you'll pull it right in the end. Everything is a choice. And he makes one more, all in good fun, when Gisborne asks for the backup plan. And Allen tells them about the exploding box at the exchange. And he says it, "Pitch," as if he knows he's just decreed his punishment in hell. Just like he said, "What's it worth?" as if he knew the answer was most certainly _not_, "England's future and an innocent boy's life."

He says he's sorry, when he returns without the boy, and he means it more than you know. You didn't hear the note in his voice. Djaq would have.

This round is like the old days, because Gisborne is in charge. You have your tricks, and he has an ambush ready. Not only do the rocks get somewhere safe, but Gisborne Indestructible gets to fight you for the second time in the past three days, now with the advantage. It's bad, but Allen's soul is lucky. He doesn't have to weigh your death on his conscience. You dump pitch and fire on the Indestructible Pants of one of the liar liars. You drown him and demand the rocks. The Sheriff says you've overestimated Gisborne's importance. He says, 'This is silly, Robin, you and I know the game has changed.' What is Sir Guy to Prince John? To Sheriff Vaisey? So Marian holds a knife to the armorer until the Sheriff gives them up, claiming she's saving Guy. She thinks she's choosing you over herself, but she chose you over her father. And the armorer left entirely.

And you fight more than anything else these days, now that the flirting games are over, but she saved your life in front of everyone. Then met your eyes as you left. And those eyes spoke volumes. It doesn't matter if you bicker every time you see each other, because that's how you look at each other.


	19. 24 The Angel of Death

**II.4 Angel of Death**

**The Firstborn Son**

* * *

Will Scarlett has another family. In Scarborough. His father lost a hand to save his sons, and now his little brother has to support the entire family. Will Scarlett has a father he loves and a brother he feels he must protect. He was never a dead man in the forest. His heart beats with life, with love, and he is dogged in protection of his family, both of them. His father told you it was all right if you didn't save his life, back when this whole thing began, but it wasn't all right with you. And that was how you took his son from him. Things we do not talk about.

Until now.

Because he's come to reclaim him. Dan and Luke Scarlett went walking through the woods into an ambush, and Will was overjoyed to see them – happier than we've seen him in a long time – and all his wild anger melted into joy as his hungry arms closed around them in their net. And the first person he introduced was Djaq. Because no one remembered what the end of the last family reunion in Sherwood was. No one remembers Tom-a-Dale.

The Sheriff employed a crazy man who believed in the Angel of Death – one of those things we don't talk about, as Christians. The Lord's Messenger who brings death to innocent people. He blamed the poor for their fate and wanted to stamp them out like rats – with what he thought was the perfect poison. An Angel bearing Devil's Cap. Ironic, it would kill any aristocrat, certainly. But any woodsman knows better. Little John does, saves the people of Pit Street and a woman's daughter, when he could not save his own family. The Sheriff called it a plague and set up a quarantine to draw out the Doogooders. His aim was off.

Because what happened in Nottingham that day was the necessary answer to the choice which started all of this – the standoff between Robin of Locksley and Vaisey of Nottingham that wasn't at all about the Scarlett boys being hung. Even their father knew that, and chose England over family. He's been trying to make up for that ever since. And in direct contrast, this "plague" is supposed to be about Robin Hood and King Richard's army – and instead it's all about the Scarlett boys. Their father speaks up because Will was ashamed that he didn't earlier, and the Sheriff casually shoots him through the heart. Because he did not learn with Davita – you can never be killed "over a complete non-entity!" because everyone is something to someone.

A masked man could be a devil or an angel. Not just once, but every time. Who is under this particular mask? There is a price to Marian's anonymity, and it is this: anyone can impersonate her and hand out poison to the poor. Like the man pretending to be caught in the quarantine who nearly poisons your men. Everything is a choice.

And there are other consequences: Sir Edward is starving in the dungeons because Marian saved your life last week. And Dan Scarlett died with a similar line on his lips. Everyone in your gang has a family somewhere except you and Much, who is no Milliner's son. And Allen whose brother you didn't save. Things we have to talk about now.

Because you wrote a letter to the King, sent it with an old friend Richard of Stoke, and Allen told Gisborne. And he was more surprised than Guy could believe but less than he would have liked to be when Richard of Stoke's corpse was brought before him. You knew that might happen, though not so early. Where is his family? You and Allen must both answer for that. Everything is a choice. Allen's Choice makes him the real Angel of Death, especially after Little John countered the poison.

Because you were too busy tending to the sick of Nottingham, Djaq showing off – an even better doctor than Will's father – then stopping the poison, to notice that Will Scarlett, a famous name in Robin Hood lore, was regretting the choice he made loudly as only a teenager can: choice between Robin's merry men of Sherwood and the Scarlett family of Scarborough. So he stopped choosing the big for the small, chose revenge over Nottingham and killed the Sheriff. You had to fake poison yourself – what have I said about faking your own death? – to get poor Will to save the Sheriff. Choose you over his father one last time, the choice he made his coming of age.

And to understand how this lovely boy turned murderer, shoved his love in a closet, you must remember all the things we do not talk about. Will Scarlett is full of anger. He is a teenager thrust into an unjust world then given a brain and a sword to fight with. He was never a Crusader and he was never a dead man of Sherwood and he was never a Prisoner of War and he was never even a conman. He is a boy who saw too much pain and risked throwing it all away before he could guess the extent of life's cruelty. He has never before taken a life, he doesn't know what it costs. He let his fury consume him when he lost too much. You are not his anchor to the world, to keep him from going into the Darkness. Or you weren't. The Sheriff just shot his anchor through the heart. Like Allen-a-Dale is the most likely in your gang to turn traitor, Will Scarlett is the most likely to turn killer. But you could bring him back, with the same choice he insisted on making in the forest. Drink the poison, or pretend to, and make him choose killing the Sheriff over losing you. The father of the Sherwood family over revenge for the Scarborough one. You've learned: everything is a choice. Well done, applying the constant lesson of this new game.

And it was into Djaq's arms that he fell, at first and at the end. Then he built a beautiful memorial of his father and saw to his brother, to show her he could open up his heart to love again. But he chose your family. And Much told Djaq not to kiss his cheek, men fall in love very easily. And she replied, "Don't worry, I don't." She wouldn't for anyone less than the Firstborn Son of Scarborough and Sherwood.

The Angel of Death used Marian's name in vain, and she came to you to reclaim it. For many reasons, she smiled at you and brought you the false Night Watchman's mask. Slid down into your arms to share the burden of reclaiming her own name. But the most important reason was this: if anyone was going to change her name, it was going to be you.


	20. 25 Ducking and Diving

**II.5 Ducking and Diving**

**Witch Hunt**

* * *

A man with two names – Henry of Louis – came to betray the king. A name for each of his faces (the Henry, the Person, in opposition to the Louis, the Position in the World Gone Wrong), and you were ready to kill him. You could have killed the Sheriff too, but then everyone in Nottingham would die. Everything is a choice. Matilda was horrified enough by Henry.

There was someone else with two faces. Except, really, it was always only the one. This was always going to happen. Allen-a-Dale is a conman. You knew that when you met him. The very first week you knew him he gave you two life stories, he gave the Sheriff two towns of origin. But it was all one face, only ever one face. His other face died in Nottingham, the only person you have ever not saved. Tom-a-Dale. That's when he stopped believing. He only looks like that man in your gang, the brave hero; people are always making that mistake, even you. This was always going to happen, one way or another. It's time to talk about it. He made everyone unsafe, Marian most of all, and you did not kill him. Everything is a choice. Why didn't you, you ask? Matilda was horrified enough by Henry.

Allen-a-Dale looks sicker every time he goes to meet Gisborne. Sir Guy killed Richard of Stoke, the fact that makes the betrayal that lost him Marian seem so silly. Because we have not learned: the alchemy isn't finished. He has only stabbed her twice, and each time is worse. Gisborne believes in progress and a twisted kind of science which he trusts will bring a magic weapon into his hands: alchemy demands three strikes. And the hollowness of his indifference is beginning to show. But Allen has come for money, in which he believes, just like everyone believes in money, and he gives Gisborne safe passage for a traitor come to tell where King Richard will land. Playing games like this is before Davita died and took the game with her.

When you realize why you missed the Messenger, your first thought was not the King, it was Marian. Because the main witch hunt is not for the wisewoman, it is for the spy in your gang. Djaq knew instantly, how long since you've thought of your men as she does? One by one, we have to talk about these things – just when you feel you have more important things to do. You let them stagnate when you had time. Everything is a choice.

You went first to Marian, told her to flee to the woods, before you went after the Messenger. Everything is a choice. You were lucky, he was stung by a bee and collapsed, allergic. The castle physicians were at a loss, only making him worse. But Gisborne was clever, resourceful, scientific, open-minded, and he knew a foul-tongued wisewoman who pissed off the physicians royally. That's the whole reason she took the job. Because Matilda (a name like Marian) couldn't be bothered with these fools and the whole lot of you and your games at all, because her daughter Rosa was having a baby. Her Locksley was very small, and it was never a question. She's the midwife who delivered you. And she wasn't going to let a boy she brought into this world kill her patient either. So she silenced him with a drug, made him talk nonsense, and was declared a witch by the Sheriff in his fury. She found the secret, long before you ever did. You could save Locksley and England at once – but the cost was yourself.

You tried to handle everything yourself, but that's the point where you couldn't. Because you were running about, keeping everyone out of the loop and in the woods. Much was heartbroken to be considered just like the others. It's heartbreaking no matter who it is, Much – although the others probably wouldn't have offered to chop off their own arms ("well, one, because then I can't chop off the other…"). He screamed petulantly, but to no more avail than ever, because he loves you more than even Marian ever could. And Little John kept ministering to other people's families, delivering the wisewoman's daughter's baby. The little girl Rosa named after his wife Alice, who was lost to him. Little John, who even people who have just met him understand deserves a family more than anyone, has no reason to betray you. But he wasn't the first to lose his family, that was Allen-a-Dale. But no one remembers Tom – save Djaq. And she went to Allen and offered forgiveness, understanding, by talking about that very boy. Tried to hold everything together even as you tore it apart to see what had gone wrong. And Allen stewed in the woods, wondering if it was too late for that.

Djaq is the only one who noticed about Allen. The focus always pulls to her when you go off with Marian. It's not because she's jealous. It's because she's the heart and soul of the gang in a way you aren't, and she steps it up when you leave. She knows them all. She sees Allen for who he is, and she tries to love him back across the line. She knows what Much needs and jokes him into contentment, she loves Will Scarlett into importance and at least once into forgiveness. She calms down Little John and gives him purpose. Things we do not have to talk about. Because of Djaq.

She can't hold it all together anymore. Not against the assault of your witch hunt.

There was clemency offered often during this tale, on which Robin Hood lore is silent. Forgiveness was offered only once, by Djaq.

Marian followed Guy and overheard that the spy was being given silver, not gold, because the "goods were damaged" through no fault of his own. But also because that is the bounty given any traitor – and Allen was about to pay dearly for his thirty pieces of silver. When he finally went to collect them at the tavern, you were there waiting for him.

Much spilled the beans in the forest, so everything was ready to go berserk when you arrived. You punched Will in the mouth, pretended he was the traitor. The most obvious, given last week's murder attempt, and the least likely, given the successful execution last week, to work for the Sheriff. And you prepared the trap for the traitor – so that your gang could go rescue Matilda the wisewoman. And the Sheriff's water plunging device was no better torture than your distrust – to an innocent like Much. To all of them. If you could have seen the pain on their faces when he first told them. Everything is a choice.

And the Sheriff brought Matilda to Locksley to drown, and that was poetic but also stupid, because of course you were going to win in Locksley. But first the family that let you choose England over them (despite the fact that their Locksley was so terribly small) had to suffer – though not through a death this time. Matilda's daughter gave birth without her mother, and the Matilda suffered but vanished from the Sheriff's madness – just as they always said a real witch would do. Funny old world, isn't it, Vaisey?

In the end, you had to kill Henry. After everything. To save Much's life as much as Richard's. The start of healing the wounds caused today. But first you saw Allen choke on the thirty pieces of silver when he saw just what they bought. But it was too late. You're not like Djaq, who could forgive England for invading her homeland and killing her twin, who could fight alongside two men who might have been the ones who did it for a country not her own. You banished Allen, and his repentance might even have been real. But you didn't realize that The King didn't mean the same thing to him as it did to you, and he didn't betray Marian or the camp. That's not bad for an a-Dale – betraying England but not Locksley. Everything is a choice, a truth screaming in his face. But Allen was right as well: you have everything if The King wins, and you promised Allen nothing. His brother is the only person you didn't save. He is a conman, and you couldn't give him enough to keep him from fearing the end of the Merry Men, which is only his most recent role in the ever-changing game. His favorite role, but only one of many. You knew his true name (an almighty trust for a conman), and you didn't guard it. You spared his life for the third time, but you granted no forgiveness.

And Marian ran around finding ways to heal your soul and your gang, and in return you had to watch her play Gisborne – who had begun to care again. And Djaq touched Will's face where you hurt him, going behind you to heal the gang. But it was Marian who helped you find the source of the bleeding.

There were three women, one called and proved a witch beyond the usual levels of veracity and the other two in danger by association. The Maid, the Mother, and the Crone. Maid Marian merrily playing Gisborne and her wiles for your truth, Rosa giving birth and inviting Little John back into the family he lost, and the foul-tongued, wonderful Crone Matilda hauling your soul back across the line. At least for the moment. They were all Marian. And with every face, she relied on you ultimately. And with every face, she would give all for you. Either she was of use to you, or she was dead already.


	21. 26 For England!

**II.6 For England…!**

**Hell Hath No Fury Like**

* * *

Today the Sheriff woke up and plotted to kill the King, today he brought the entire conspiracy to Nottingham to sign a Pact, and you could not ignore that. Today you will try to kill him, Nottingham be damned. The whole shire will die for the Pact given their name. Everything is a choice.

Allen was the first to die. The first you chose to die. So he went to Sir Guy, and offered his considerable services. At first Gisborne told Allen he was only a forcefully retired spy, but that was never true. Because the whole reason Guy recruited him was because he was never only a hero; he has never been only one thing in his entire life. He is a conman, and a damn good one even before you. And now he's on the side trying to unleash Hell. What else can a dead man do? Everything is a choice.

Richard of Stoke is dead. A name that sounds like the King's and should have been the one to save the King. Gisborne told Winchester, who told Knighton, who told Locksley. Allen's tombstone will read: Richard of Stoke is dead. Which will be chiseled soon if he doesn't stop stepping into the Sheriff's chambers at just the wrong moment.

It's been a year since Guy first placed his ring on Marian's finger. The King's birthday, when his nobles gather to commit to his regicide. For their anniversary, Sir Guy asks for a date. He's not alone. He wasn't last time either. For old time's sake, you drop in from the ceiling once he leaves the room. But there's an older love triangle at work here. One you might have learnt from.

Winchester was listed among the Black Knights, and Marian thought it must be a mistake. He was once a friend of her father, his best friend. But he loved her mother as well. And the woman who gave birth to the Night Watchman chose the dopey but devoted Sir Edward. They were boys together, but only until they met a girl. Katherine was her name. So like Marian the sight of her stopped Winchester in his tracks, as it does Edward every day.

Politics hath no fury like a man passed over for his former best mate. Thank God Much never liked Marian. Because Winchester played you like a fiddle (that conceals a dagger) and gloated to the man who bested him in love. His cruelest ploy was not duping you to the Black Knights or demanding all of Sussex from the Sheriff with the chips you dealt him; it was when he leaned close and whispered to Edward in his prison, "If I couldn't have the mother…"

And you can pretend this isn't about choosing Richard over Marian all you like, claiming you'll spring them from jail, but you are. Because Sir Guy tried to warn and rescue her, and then he went after her when Winchester hauled her away. While you were writing letters and sneaking into the secret chambers of the treacherous. Everything is a choice, and these are important. They're about stopping Hell.

Will made his own penance, for murder, in the Forest. He made weapons into musical instruments. A fitting penance for a man who went mad with violence and took the risk you're about to for the smallest Locksley yet. Something beautiful and brilliant, he made with his hands, and Djaq called him both, making him smile. The first smile we've seen since Dan. It got you into the castle. So you could act a fool. The only thing worse than casually faking your own death is casually accepting it.

You failed, of course, your attempt to kill everyone in the room. A hell of a coming out party for your newfound ability to murder. They put you up on a thin plank and made you fight Allen. Over boiling pitch. Oh yes, Allen died at your order and went straight to hell. Is it any wonder he wanted to knock you off your high and mighty perch? For you, the bigger torture was seeing Marian chained to the man who wasn't even good enough for her mother.

When the Sheriff ordered music to your death, your gang fought you out of the mess again with Will's penance. Little John spared Allen's life but screamed and left him in Hell as you burned everything in the pitch. Why kill him? He was already dead.

And Sir Guy was going absolutely insane. Because he couldn't protect his new man, his prize stolen from Hood, any more than he could save his renewed love, the prize stolen from him by Hood. He reinforced his choice of power and the Sheriff, but it cost him nearly everything. But at the last second he had a reprieve. The Sheriff sent him after Marian, and Allen lived to betray you for him another day. So many nearly died today – everyone nearly died today. It was the Sheriff who granted the reprieve, by outplaying Winchester as you honorable men could not. In the end it was only Winchester, by his order, and Allen, by yours. Much was looking desperately for the good bit, and that was it: hell only took two souls on the day it plotted to overrun the kingdom.

But you said goodbye, when you thought it would be your last chance, and placed your hope of a life with her in the promise of the next one. And you knew it might be a promise, but you didn't know it would outlive the current difficulty. And you were willing, in the end, to choose Richard over Marian and England over not just Locksley but all of Nottingham. But it was to her you left the defending of the Forest, the country, and the King. To your better half. Your last order to your gang was to save her.


	22. 27 Show Me the Money

**II.7 Show Me the Money!**

**The Price of A Good Woman**

* * *

The treasure chest of Nottingham now holds the fate of England. The Pact of Hell was a blow, because half of England was pledged to treachery and sin and its nobles consigned to the deepest levels of the Ninth Circle, but it was also a mistake. Proof of treason, waiting for you to steal. Like you do best.

The Sheriff wasn't an idiot, he hid it all away. You used a man in love to find it, promised to bring a Benedick (John) his Beatrice and free her from the slavery she inherited from her father. But Allen wasn't an idiot either. He hung it in the sky, a new "impregnable" strongbox, which was a blow because you'd never be able to sneak up on it and that was your biggest advantage. But it was also a mistake. Money, waiting for you to make it rain on the poor. Like you do best.

They claimed the girl was dead because they'd already sold her. A "holy" man called her Church property, turning my stomach. She even looks a bit like Marian. And Allen sealed you out of the Castle. Then poor John went mad and failed spectacularly as a knight rescuing his lady fair, but you sympathized as much as ever and brought him into the Forest. And since we're talking about reclaiming lost loves, when the woman who looks like Alice called for John, I wonder if John Little heard, somewhere in the mighty midst of Little John. At their wedding, Little John was the first Beatrice turned to. Beatrice, a name like the successor of Alice.

Sir Edward had a different attitude, after Winchester took his daughter and his hope. The latter was not returned as quickly as the former. He called you and Marian fools for your hope, and she told him she was ashamed of him at times. For being weak, for losing the Sheriff post to Vaisey, for calmly taking everything for the sake of his failed Long Game. Things we did not talk about, before the world went to Hell. Because now we need someone to blame. And in her shame, he found new hope. With all the recent talk of the darling Kate, words of shame on her lips have even more than the desired effect.

But she kept flitting between her men, as usual, wracking up debts as she played the fully-reinvested Gisborne off her father's pretended relapse to come warn you: Allen was leading them to your camp. You consigned him to Hell, of course he'll behave like a demon. And you all ambushed him and Gisborne in the woods, where the last fight you had was when Allen returned (with Will rather than Gisborne) to your gang and saved you. Only Djaq believed that Allen could be saved this second time. You went to Nottingham to protect Marian.

Also to prove that no grillwork on the windows was a substitute for hiring guards with more brains than a particularly dense cow. Djaq warned you against descending into Hell to commit an exorcism, asked you instead to rescue a soul from its depths. And you could have, Allen loved all of you, but you fought him and tried to kill him instead. It took Marian to stop you. She put Allen in her debt, and demanded his life on the bond of your love for her, selling herself to stop you. The Pact to pull Allen out of Hell. Always, she was the Guardian of your soul.

And when Marian came to warn you, the two of you flirted and fought before getting back to business. Twice today, you called her gorgeous. Twice today, you called her your love. And twice today, on this day when we talked about women as property of one man or another, in marriage and otherwise, so many times it could turn you stomach more than one of Marian's punches, she told you this, "Someday you will pay, Robin of Locksley."

Because none of you yet knew the power of words. How they twist and turn. It was a promise, yes, and a prophecy.

Marian's other men were listening as well, and the words were taking terrible turns. Marian's taunting made Sir Edward remember England. He did the math you do every day, but he's been doing it longer – most recently from a dungeon. He measures Nottingham against England and there's nothing to talk about anymore. You meet him when you go for the pact in the chamber of the Sheriff, even in sleep his fingers groping for the keys to hell. I mentioned Benedick and Beatrice earlier, but it's Hamlet that nearly happens here. Polonius behind the arras when the Sheriff awakes, and you spring out of nowhere and escape the castle.

It's the Holy Man Who Sells Women who kills Marian's father. You proved you could kill for Richard with Henry of Louis; when the archbishop threatened to kill Marian's father, you killed for her. And it took Edward pulling you from both directions – England and Locksley, to get you to leave Marian's heart to die with the holy knife through his heart.

He whispered to you the words to save her. It was her ransom, the power to save herself from this system of buying and selling the hearts of women. Even the Earl of Durham didn't just want Beatrice's body but her heart and soul in marriage. And Sir Guy brought Marian to her father and tried to buy her love with his silence on her part in it. Tried to purchase her with his own love, pouncing when she needed approval and love most in the world. And she needed the ransom because she was sobbing that he died believing she was a willful daughter as if that isn't a good thing, blaming herself as the bad possession which turned like a holy knife in his breast. And you passed along the message to set her free – from this world where women are bought and sold and she was mortgaged to Sir Edward's Long Game long after it had failed. "It is good to dream." Of a world where women are all willful and free. It is good.

She could finally choose the forest. And she did.


	23. 28 Get Carter!

**II.8 Get Carter!**

**Adrift**

**

* * *

  
**

There's a catch to the question – the only question these days, the one decided daily a dozen different ways. A Catch-22. Because Locksley will not be allowed to stand if there is no England, and England will never again be beautiful built on the blood of the people of Locksley. The same is true of Richard and Marian, and the question that ended a marriage and the Long Game in one: Edward or Marian. The choice was easy, but the consequence is not as tidy as the question.

Who is Marian without Edward? For that matter, who is Carter without his brother? Or Guy without Marian? The answers are: angry, vengeful, and surprisingly merciful.

This is that moment – that terrible moment – when you realize that just by asking the question they've won. It's so natural to meet that moment with despair and that despair with rage – and the creature born out of that moment would be a fearful thing – hopeless and furious and full of fire. What it took to save the creature trying to be born is the same as the one grown in his hatred – love and hard truth, and the extraordinary grace that is Robin Hood to turn all their fires into not ash but the warmth of a hearth. Today, you were beautiful

Today, you were rehearsing.

They all have a champion, until you can save them. Marian wants to be someone different, someone new, who won't hurt the way Lady Marian of Knighton Hall does. She always thought she'd be so happy as Robin Hood's bride in the Forest. Little John takes her in his arms because she won't take yours, and he's the one who knows how it feels to lose his family. Carter wants to hurt someone as badly as he is hurting, but Much knows his face and calls out to his true face again and again. He knows how to find a Crusader's soul. And Guy just has to put up with the Sheriff's teasing, for once not pleased to be getting so much attention. And then Allen, whom he sent to look for her – the traitor banished to hell going after the girl who felt plunged into its depths. But you won't save either of them, can't show Gisborne or Allen love and truth and grace. Things we do not talk about – yet. But they could have helped – or maybe they wouldn't have been enough in any case. The question had already been posed.

We met Carter in Locksley, Marian charged down without a plan and your men had to rescue her. You had to tie her up to get her to stop, and she was furious and caged just when she thought she was set free. She didn't like being treated like a child, but she had been born into a new life. And even John couldn't bear hug it better. She beat a captive tied to a tree (then just the tree itself), and I wonder if she finally understood when you did the same to Gisborne last year. Carter saved your life from an "ambush" then went collecting your men in the camp. He was smart. He grabbed Djaq first – if he'd taken anyone else first she would have known it.

And Carter had his own question: who is Robin Hood without his Merry Men? The initial answer: very, very calm. When you were ready, when Carter was overconfident, then you sprang. It was at her name, yes, but it was the right moment in any case. Much struggled free to shout – always he took it so personally when Crusaders fell to the dark. That was how he found his heroism, what he anchored it in while you were too busy to give him his honor. Too busy to listen to him – about Carter or about the Holy Land. It's your story too, so you don't have to listen, you think. You don't want to listen to it all over again. Things we do not talk about – do you really have to say it?

We have another Crusader to tend to. Rather than beating him, you brought Carter to the village to talk about families and loss. Did you know – could you know – that you were hitting just the right and just the wrong note with this man? Everyone cared about the families of the dead – even Gisborne for the widows of the guards. But not Carter. He sees nothing beyond his own pain. He who should know it best.

Allen and Marian hatched a plan for her cover in the Forest. Marian admitted him, because she was angry at everyone else, and she knew he could not boss her about with her heart pledged to his life. So he turned conman on her behalf, and he was so beautifully desperate for someone good to love him again that he attacked a nun. Because Allen never really quite got it. Marian must always be in a triangle, and one was forming without you in it: the Castle Triangle.

Carter escaped and ambushed you in a barn to tell you the lies he had been fed. You see, he lost a brother in the Holy Land to an Englishman. They told him it was you. Thomas, you didn't even know him at first. Boy did that make Carter angry, he exists only to kill you. But the boy went Marian on you, turned brave fool at the pain and death of the Holy Crusades. You named other names, the ones that died because of Thomas. And Robin spilled all of the dead boys secrets – how the heroic last stand was a lie, how he died crying, and finally the words that made Carter believe, the family joke: "laughing out the wrong side of my face." Aren't we all, without the people we love? Those of us who still know which face is ours.

But the killing will not bring any of them peace – Carter, Guy or Marian. Carter was the first to realize, and he knelt to ask you for help and peace. Who was he without Thomas, whom he'd followed since he was a boy? Tell him, please, something better than this to be. Like you did the dead men of Sherwood once upon a time.

You did. And you had the most elaborate faking of your own death yet. The people of Nottingham put flowers on your bier. You put your life and the Pact of Hell in play for five hundred pounds for the families whose patriarchs died – as if you weren't a patriarch for the whole Shire. You nearly died at Gisborne's hand, but Marian popped out and distracted him – even kissed him – to give you time to escape. And Carter found something better to be, even strong enough to return to the Holy Land.

He said one thing too many times to be ignored: it would be so much easier to just kill the Sheriff. And every day he wakes up to try to kill your precious king, and you do nothing. Sending Carter to warn him helps, but it does not absolve you of the choice.

And Marian's conversation with Gisborne showed her what a cage was. Then she saw that you were trying to keep her from forging her own bars. And you saw that the way she was twisting her grief could be solved with love, not just anger. So you both turned your quarrel into a flirt and took each other's hands – because you realized, the most important thing she wanted to be in the wake of losing Edward was yours.

So I won't talk, yet, about how you should have taken a lesson from this moment. You did not yet have to face the question: who am I without my beloved? You will. I'm sorry Robin, but you will. Remember how Carter and Marian were answered, and do not make their mistake. Not for too long.


	24. 29 Lardner's Ring

**II.9 Lardner's Ring**

**This Changes Nothing**

**

* * *

  
**

King Richard doesn't know yet, that anything has changed. So he sent another wounded Crusader to Locksley. And the man went to your old home then fled into your new one, and he dangled in a tree by his wounded leg until finally he fell. At the bottom, you met him and Allen both. The Crusader was dead already, and so was Allen. That you knew, and you would lift no finger to bring him back.

Allen doesn't know yet, that things are worth dying for. He counts his money in the morning. He tells the messenger to just give him the letter and no one has to get hurt. Just give up the pact, surrender the King's guardians, and no one has to get hurt. Then it's over. That's what Allen thinks. He thinks the Sheriff will ever stop. He thinks Robin Hood will ever stop. He's served you both now, and he hasn't learned.

But today isn't about the lost and forsaken, the pointy ends of the Triangles who will be impaled upon the sharp point. It's about the couples. And when it's about Djaq, it's her and Will, not about how Lardner's Ring means something very different to her than to everyone in England – means her people must be captured or obliterated. And this, right here, with a name, is where the break comes. This is where you lost her. The moment she heard the name Lardner, it called her heart home. It's not about Much and John either, although Much jokes that they're left out of the new couples – the ones not off getting "honey" or marriage proposals. The ones without family. This is where the break is, this is how you broke John. You can never lose Much, but this is when he was clutching tightest and dangling by the thinnest string. It's not even about Allen, who's letting the Fool take his keys and playing Gisborne to help save you and Marian. It's too small to see from way up in the tree, but the tide is turning for poor Allen. Even if he killed the wounded Crusader.

Things we're too busy dancing around each other to talk about. And it's all about the couples, in a story about a dance. It was you and Marian who found Lawrence and Lardner, the one-legged messenger from King Richard and the winged messenger back to him. And Djaq and Will went for honey and ended up in Locksley seeing Gisborne going crazy looking for a ring. If only he knew about the other one.

Djaq and Will work together in the village, she uncovers Lardner's Ring to him and he gets caught as they dance their way out together. He gets a new partner in the Castle, the Fool of Locksley who was foolish enough to get away with sending King Richard's messenger into the Forest after you. Wise enough to tie up all the Sheriff's cleverness in proving his folly. Wise enough to see what everyone else misses – namely, Allen, and how he's looking for a way out of hell. He lets the Fool take his keys, and the boys escape from the hangman's rope. I wonder – does the Sheriff even remember? How he was nearly killed over Dan Scarlett? Is that why he doesn't stay for the hanging, or was he too much of a non-entity? No one is a non-entity. The lesson of Davita and Dan. Everyone is someone's someone.

And Will's was in the Forest, so he didn't hear her tale of how the Saracen pigeon has a heart mightier than any eagle. How it will fly to its mate, its lover, from the far corners of the earth, always certain where its heart can be found. Faster and straighter than any robin could fly. You were not the first to do so, Djaq was, before she even knew whose heart she was seeking.

But when you and Marian find yourself trapped up a tree with that mighty, lovesick bird, it is breaking apart which must be the next step in your dance if you are to survive. You try to hold her when you should spin her out, but she is right: the dance changes nothing. Fling her to the far corners of the world and you will find each other. Even if you must leave her to Gisborne's pincer tight arms as you dive through the smokescreen for the ground. Leaving Lady Marian in harm's way for the chance to warn King Richard. But you were not the only one who made a trade – Gisborne chose the opposite way today. Something to think about.

Unless, of course, the Vaisey hunting hawk catches her, like Lardner, in the air. But the Fool knew the steps of the dance and showed you: this defeat means nothing. Lardner was safe, it was the Fool's white dove who was sacrificed. But do be warned, Robin of Locksley: Lardner is King Richard, you are the wise Fool (a better description of you than any yet), and his dove is Marian. Her double has died a thousand times in your dance and once she herself.

But this means nothing to you now. Because after you and she agreed that King Richard's ignorant orders could not compel you back to the Holy Land, that his request for troops changes nothing in England, you stood at your friend's grave and asked Marian to marry you. Because your heart knew hers, like you hands knew your bow, from the very first moment. Together you were stronger, and separated you would leap straighter than any other Robin could fly, back into her arms. And oh, she was careful, even as she marveled at you: this big, brave, beautiful man who always talked to her like he was a fool. Yes, she said, but know that this changes nothing. Save the King, save Nottingham, reclaim Locksley, then get married. That was always her plan.

The ring changes nothing. It was just the next step in the dance.


	25. 210 Walkabout

**II.10 Walkabout**

**Solving for Nottingham**

* * *

Today the Sheriff did not wake up and try to kill the King. Today Nottingham nearly burned, to the very last child and scrap of wood. Today there was no question in your mind.

Questions were the province of others. Of Guy of Gisborne in particular. One big one: Where, oh where, did Vaisey go? In his night clothes, chasing the Pact in his dreams?

The man from London had no questions, only an ultimatum, so Gisborne tried appealing to Prince John and money as high as the New England could reach and to Marian to marry him to save herself, the tiny Lady Locksley, but the answer was simple: the Sheriff and you. Like Marian said, offering to fetch you for him.

Because all bets were off. The little clerk from London was about to spoil the whole game, so suddenly the sides didn't matter. Allen-a-Dale returned to the camp, Marian leveraged your engagement ring to get you to the Castle, and you walked right in through the city gates as you haven't done since you came to read the Scarlett boys' execution degree. Will Scarlett and Allen-a-Dale stood together looking over the soldiers and villagers working together to find Vaisey lest Davita's dying promise come true. And Allen finally asked – if we don't die here, can I finally come out of hell? Will said no, but he shook his head as they were about to die – the first hand to bring him back up as the entire world slides into fire.

And Little John, being ushered every week into being the Father of Nottingham, invited into every family he encounters but his own, just wants to go among the poor. People are starving while the Sheriff roams Sherwood lost. Everything is a choice – remember that? Like you going back for Much when time was tightest, because you know he needs a smile from you to keep going. He doesn't believe in Bonchurch anymore – it feels like a place to stick him to keep him out from under foot. So you can have Marian alone in Locksley.

There is a family in the forest that desperately needs a strong and good patriarch. Their mother is driven mad with the harshness of the world and greets it as it has always greeted her – with a knife and a snarl. They needed Papa Bear, but a false grandfather arrived first. Vaisey played Little John's strings like a master, and he took them back to the camp, carrying three children in his arms because if anyone deserves to be a father it is Little John, but John Little walked away from his family. And again, Vaisey uses a family to smash the great man flat.

But you realized, in the Forest, that Vaisey was still playing for England. He was colliding with the Little Family for the Pact of Hell, and you took him back just in time to stop the fire of Nottingham.

This is the strongest iteration of the question yet – and not just because it turned the game on its head or even because everyone's now literally, immediately, at stake. Because each side has their champion, and they do battle. Sheriff Vaisey plays for England, Robin Hood for Nottingham, and Little John for Locksley. They are damn near evenly matched. And the terrible truth we tried to run from with Carter was acted out again: by fighting at all Little Locksley and Vaisey's new England nearly destroyed everything.

But then the answer, three deaths and two heartbreaks before you needed it: you saved them all by solving for Nottingham. That's where Locksley and England always collide, and that's where they can both be spared – with the incredible Grace of Robin Hood. Think of that, tumbling down the cliff thinking it will set you free when you've trained them to never believe tales of your death – didn't I warn you?

Think, about Marian versus Richard, and remember that if she is Locksley and he is England – you are Nottingham. You are the lynchpin of the whole game.

And think on this. Richard's Mirror is his brother John, yours as always if Sheriff Vaisey, and Marian's is Guy of Gisborne, who always reaches for Locksley first. The game will be decided by you and Vaisey on behalf of the others. But that does not mean they are idle in the meantime.

You could not grasp this yet, no more than you could be the fulcrum of every choice. Those of us without the extraordinary grace of Robin Hood – no wonder you tried to spread its protection to all of your men – must simply choose.

And Marian let Gisborne stand in your place between the people of Nottingham and harm's way to keep him from standing in the place she promised you the week before. She had two engagement rings in play now, and though she told Guy she would not marry him to save herself from the inferno of the shire, she smiled that he came back for her. She realized just what she was doing, by playing him. Perhaps she was his soul's ransom after all, and he's not trying to steal it any longer.

She could love him, if it weren't for you. Locksley could learn to respect him as lord, if it weren't for you. And both would change him, soften him, even make him honorable if not kind. What would Guy of Gisborne have been if there were no Robin of Locksley? Questions we only ask now, when everything is up in the air and the rules are suspended, when the Gates of Hell have been thrown open. Before the Devil arrives to close them again. In the quiet, before the Flames or the Grace arrive.

This is the moment Lady Marian of Knighton Hall could have saved Sir Guy of Gisborne. But she was wearing your ring.

Everything is a choice.


	26. 211 Treasure of the Nation

**II.11 Treasure of the Nation**

**Your Answer. Now.**

* * *

There are two plots going at once now. They intertwine, yes, but they are not linked like every other game you've played. You cannot solve the other by fixing the one, you cannot play them against each other. Your tricks are useless here. There has to be a choice. You chose England over Marian by leaving her and Allen alone with Gisborne in order to play Da Vinci Code with King Richard and Le Grande. You can't pretend she didn't tell you Gisborne turned Locksley out, can't pretend you didn't know she'd try to help herself. Would you have listened closer if you had known it was the last time you would talk before the day of her death? Everything is a choice.

I hope you had fun – the last grande old game, racing the Sheriff to the most impressive treasure yet. Your gang, wonderful all. Little John got to be awesome, playing Big Bear with Le Grande; Djaq got to be knowledgeable and deep about the clues; Will Scarlett got to be brilliant solving puzzles – remember how lovely our boy was before Dan died? Remember when he saw only a key to freedom in the empty boxes of a treacherous clerk? ; Much got to be the respected fellow Crusader on another madcap adventure with you; and you got to feel import and useful and clever – trusted – rather than desperate and useless. And disobedient. One last Grande Romp in the Forest for the Merry Men.

And in Locksley, Allen and Marian paid for it. The Castle Triangle collided at the pivot point of Sir Guy's soul. He finally unmasked the Knighton Watchman come to steal back the food to feed Locksley – which always belonged to her, which she'd been doing long before you came wandering back from the Holy Land to become Robin Hood. And she broke Gisborne's heart, because he saw the wound and knew that all his offerings to her as the future Lady Gisborne were nothing to her. And Will told Allen it was too late for him to redeem himself, so he wouldn't help her. Not for the mere hope that his damner would lift the sentence. You have to pull yourself out of hell. Ask Allen how it's done, when this is all over.

But she chose this. Everything is a choice, but especially this. She let Gisborne fall in love with her because it helped you and Nottingham and England. And she chooses to beg for her life by promising him love in return. She seals her fate, beyond this scare. He asks if she ever even knew what he was feeling and thinking. Did she ever care? It's too late before you return.

You chose to save another woman today. Everything is a choice. The Queen Mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who looks like Alice and Marian – like all the others – must be rescued to keep the army which fights on her behalf from joining Prince John. After many shenanigans you do, laughing with your lovely gang. And John gets his first post-Richard's Return offer – and why not, really? Let Little John be consort to the Queen Mother and surrogate father to a country desperately in need of a Papa Bear. Perhaps he helps her ransom Richard, in time. It is not without its cost – Le Grande from the Holy Land dies, but you bring Queen Eleanor's money back for Locksley. Thinking that will solve the B Plot this week.

It won't. Because Marian never waited for you to return home to start making things better. She was the Night Watchman long before you were Robin Hood. But in one of the empty rooms of the Castle which looked to Sir Guy to save them the last time the Sheriff and you were away, he makes a simple decision. He does not want this life without Marian in it – however tainted his memories now, he allows himself hope in the future – and he saves her for you. He puts Allen-a-Dale back into the colors of the Forest, and oh, the fun Allen had with that. Oh what that meant to him. It is the greatest thing Guy of Gisborne has ever done or will ever do. But he will lose them both because of this, and that double abandonment will damn him forever. Everything is a choice, even the smile and kiss she grants him.

One last warning, though you weren't there for it, one last revelation about the eternal question which has plagued you ever since the Return of the False Richard: it isn't always posed to you. You are the Secret Grace, the unexpected Answer. You've learned how, when posed Locksley or England?, to pull Nottingham out of your hat. Richard or Marian? Robin Hood. But the question isn't posed to you. It's fine when it's Marian choosing, her first thought is always you, but from here on out it all comes down to Guy of Gisborne. And you can never be his answer.

He will choose both ways, in time, as you did once in a blessed time. This was Marian's last turn. It's no mistake we revisited the old wound. There must be a third strike before the alchemy is finished.


	27. 212 A Good Day to Die

* * *

**A/N:** This seems like a good time to say: I am planning to do Season 3, but for a number of reasons including my hectic schedule as Grad School gets going and the fact that I don't own Season 3, I'm going to be following the BBC America release dates. That means going to every week. While I'll finish Season 2 tomorrow and begin posting the first episodes of Season 3, it'll be a week before Episode 3 (probably next Sunday) shows up. Here's hoping you'll stick around.

* * *

**II.12 Good Day to Die**

**The Things We Do Not Talk About**

* * *

Fables of Friendship and Betrayal

The Kalila and Dimna is a series of fables of which there is no definitive text, much like Robin Hood lore. It is stories of friendship and betrayal and faith in rebellion against oppression. It is a story we should all, in this time in our world, take the time to hear told. Much like Robin Hood lore. So, before the end, as the charm winds up, let's all take a moment.

* * *

The villages have suffered because of your personal battle with the Sheriff, Nettlestone most of all. They were the first to turn away from you, do you remember that? And Matthew the Milliner's son? When you rob the Sheriff's storeroom he simply hikes their taxes, so you bring gifts but still they suffer. Locksley was turned out to bring in mercenaries in direct response to your actions. And still they love you – but enough to let their village burn in order to save you? Would they trade their tongues for you? Nettlestone most of all. Things you can think about now – you have the time, trapped in a Nettlsetone barn at your birthday party crashed by mercenaries. You have time to think of a lot of things, your true gift on this day of your birth and intended for your death.

Much blamed himself. Djaq disobeyed you to protect the secrets of her homeland. Shall we start there? The Greek Fire's held off the mercenaries for now.

But since the action is happening elsewhere, let's start with Sheriff Vaisey. He's the most honest and open of any of you, so it's not a bad place. We've talked about Davita and a man without a heart left in him, we've talked about obsession – but have we talked about this: how many times can you fail the Black Knights and remain at their head? Under a cruel prince like John? How long before he tires of a man so easily foiled by a common outlaw? And, every day, you get stronger. Again and again, you send the King your warnings. No wonder he's biting and sleepwalking in his frustration and desperate fury. You've won this Long Game – so he changes it. He was never a fool, for all his tomfoolery with the corpse tooth.

And he knows how to play the sensitive strings of Guy of Gisborne. The man who keeps his heart separate from his soul, who thinks he can give his heart to sweet, innocent Marian then do what he likes to his poor, battered soul. The lord without lands, who only wants to look after someone. It's possession, yes, but that means more than you could ever understand – you who have always had everything. Losing it is not the same as never having had it. And the power he wants is so that he can protect what he loves – against all the odds, he has found love. He can only steal it, usually from you, in this rough and cruel world he's known longer than any of us but Allen. Even Vaisey had Davita, once. For Sir Guy of an imaginary Gisborne, there has only ever been Marian and now Allen, whom he brings along on the mission – "his boy" at last. And you can't, in his world, have Marian and Allen without the Sheriff. The Castle Triangle needs its protector or the Sheriff will spill them all onto the flagstones. He's tried before. Guy is not the kind of man for your life, so he trades another piece of his soul for the chance to keep the Guardian of His Heart and His Boy, the only boy in the world loyal to him first, safe. He'll see to a lordship for Allen if he will prove that in the Holy Land, prove he is His Boy.

Which is the best offer that will ever be made to Allen-a-Dale whose brother died in the very castle where he now serves his term in Hell for treachery, but it is also the offer which set him free. Hell is always in your own mind. Marian asked what happened to him that he'll let this happen for any amount of money, and though the answer's simple, it shows she's got his number more than anyone else in Nottingham. It was Will Scarlett, turning away his hope to come home when the Devil's absence threw open the Gates. Why not build a castle in Dis if you can't get out of Hell? With a lordship, he will never again be at the mercy of your favor, begging to be an outlaw again. He was one long before you came along. At his heart, Allen-a-Dale is but a simple conman, so this is actually not the offer to make to a man like him. When it was just a safe place in the storm England has become, a new face to put on like a mask to protect the real one, whatever that is, for the time being – then he could say he had no choice, that he was playing for his very survival without your protection. Now he feels bought and paid for, however handsomely, and there's nothing a conman hates more – even if he has never been a penniless hero. So he's on the road to Portsmouth, ready to be pushed back over the edge by the lovely lady who's been trying to ease him home ever since she left the Castle herself – ever since she felt Death's Sting across her back.

The girl who's been desperate ever since that moment. She saw how fast her father's Long Game collapsed when he couldn't read the signs, when he couldn't back it up with Force, when Robin Hood disappeared into thin air. And her own Long Game foils at the thought of King Richard's return – like Sir Edward's. Of all of you, she does not understand Locksley versus England as a question. But then, she is Locksley. So she has a right to say that England takes precedence, and she sees it more simply: save everyone. She's laid down herself for Locksley again and again, and no one ever lost a tongue because of the Night Watchman – though some were poisoned in Pitt Street. So, with you away and unable to solve for Nottingham, Locksley steals a traitor's sword to commit the treachery she always made sure she was in the Castle to commit when the time came. Kill the Sheriff, because she's sure that the King has arrived and it's okay to _finally_ strike down the man who killed her father, a thousand times before a bishop finished the job. Without you, she was always a child of fury and action – since Edward. With you penned in Nettlestone's birthday party, Lady Marian panicked and got herself caught. Locksley is not the answer to Nottingham. Neither is England, we'll learn all too soon.

That is the foursome headed to the Holy Land. Marian and Vaisey the fixed points on opposite ends, Guy and Allen floating between them. Marian and Guy fighting again but Allen ripe for the picking. And at her lowest, Lady Marian reaches down into Hell and draws the poor soul you banished out again. Vaisey finally brought her low enough to touch Allen, Guy finally lifted him out of the mire enough to reach up and take her hand. Your love and your hate are still stuck in the Castle Triangle, but they saved one of their number. That is the redemption of Allen-a-Dale, Marian in a barn and an offer of a lordship from Gisborne. Your life waiting to be saved in Nettlestone.

And plenty to contemplate in the meantime. Especially once you said to die fighting at dawn.

Djaq, of course, had a name for it. The time when we say all the things we don't talk about. And what she says is simplest, and sweetest, and the most general. To each she speaks, because she shelters all, before turning to Will Scarlett. In moments, they exchange more words of love than you and Marian ever found time for. They love each other's strength, but she could not tell him until they were dead, because her battered homeland is calling her back. She dare not risk the holds she has to England – this gang in all its fun and loveliness. Afraid of getting caught, afraid of being propelled away. Even moreso once he's said it back. She waits until dawn to kiss him.

Because he shoved her in a closet to commit murder. Because his father died but his brother is orphaned alone in Scarborough. Because he of all this gang has ties to keep him in England, ties he's been ignoring too long. Because she looks sadly after Robin and Marian. Because she was a Prisoner of War. Because he was afraid of her when he first saw her. Because her heaven is different than his. Only at Death's Barndoor do they risk touching.

And Little John who's been shepherding everyone's families can't forgive himself for what he let happen to his own – can't let delivering Rosa's Alice make up for missing his Alice giving birth, or carrying three children to the camp redeem him for letting his own son be crippled, or let saving the Queen Mother absolve him of leaving his own wife behind, or saving all the children of Pitt Street for not being there for his son when the Sheriff's men crippled him. Little John can show you – the way out when your reasons to live have gone. How to come back from death – and how to live with yourself once you do. No one deserves love more than such a man. No one will ever believe it less than John Little, trapped in the body of a Bear, a Hero, a Consort Fit for a Queen, a _Father_ – of nations, of outlaws, of towns…but never of his own son. That is what it means to have a family. Nothing else in your life will ever matter as much as they do. John Little died in Sherwood, every day is a good day to die for Little John.

The first thing we ever saw you do was call Much an idiot. The second thing we saw you do was make him your equal, your brother not your manservant. But of all your gang now, he is the only one you do not treat as an equal. They have all watched and all laughed at good old Much. Much who gave up Bonchurch and Eve for you without a second thought. Much who takes in every broken Crusader you give him except the one he traveled home to heal. Because you will not come to him – he knows he could help you. But you chose Marian and repression and these days he thinks Bonchurch was just a way to get rid of him. His is a war hero who saved your life a dozen times demoted to camp cook because he has no Other Skill to offer like Will's carpentry or John's hunting or Djaq's medicine. Somehow cooking doesn't count – somehow he doesn't count. Just saying. Once – before we go back to the Holy Land.

Finally, they made you speak. Because they all spoke. And you said nothing that we have not talked about a thousand times before – but never with Much. Never with those who needed to hear it the most. And at the end of this night in which you faced all that you cost your gang, it's no wonder you just wanted to go ahead and die fighting already. But you spoke of the love you had for them, and they all remembered. And the most beautiful thing you said was that you trusted in Marian that you may well survive after all. You were right to. But barring her light, you were all ready to go into the night together. Remember that, the strength you gathered from them alone, even if it was to go into the Dark. Djaq finally kissed Will. And then you opened the door for death.

And Allen was there on the other side. He crossed to your side of the line again with a cry of, "Thank God." He was already redeemed. He had already been rescued. There was only you and Much left to offer their forgiveness, because Djaq spoke for him before you even uncovered him, and Little John didn't kill him given the chance, and Will Scarlett took his hand as the world descended into hell. And Allen-a-Dale remembered what he was at the heart – a simple but brilliant con man – and he spun a lie to give you all time to escape. Thinned their ranks enough for you to run for horses. And he told you about the King's danger. And Much turned to Allen, "Glad to have you back." So you moved on from all the things you talked about in Kalila and Dimna and went back into action mode, putting them all aside again.

But today was a good day to survive. Today was a good day to come back to life.

Marian's last gift.


	28. 213 We Are Robin Hood

**II.13 We Are Robin Hood**

**It Is Finished**

* * *

Today the Sheriff woke up and tried to kill the king. And no one ever said he was bad at his job. For all you've beaten him time and again, Sheriff Vaisey of Nottingham is _very_ good at his job. And you never killed him with a single shot from your bow. Everything is a choice. This is the end, the time of reckoning. Payment's due.

Marian knew. She's always known. Known everything you didn't, everything we don't talk about. In a pretty white dress, she told Sir Guy to kill the Sheriff and she would give him his heart's desire – now that you were dead. Yes, she said that, but she also offered to be his protector with King Richard, and Sir Guy of Gisborne cannot accept that. He's seen Marian and her Long Games beaten too many times, he knows he rather has to protect her. But she never let him do that. Sir Guy never wanted to wait for gifts – even such beautiful ones – he was always more of the mind to take them. That is what Marian always forgot about Guy of Gisborne. And she said many things she'd regret later: this is your last chance to be a good man. We are all afraid, because he will take her at her words. She said them, willing to take the risk that they were a curse. But she did not know that they were a death sentence.

Because, in the end, the only person who has never betrayed Guy of Gisborne is Sheriff Vaisey. Funny old world, isn't it? Allen abandoned him, Marian chose Robin's side, the only one left now is Vaisey who said to him, "It's better this way. Just you and me." Marian's fatal mistake: she made Vaisey someone he needed to protect, and that was _all_ that Guy of Gisborne ever wanted. Now Vaisey is everything he has ever needed. (And so, of course, Vaisey then betrays him by leaving Marian to die with you, but we're not there yet.)

And in the meantime, everything was coming back to Djaq, who brought her family into play to save England. Her home, the Holy Land, and she was glad that towns were back under the control of her people even if it was a setback. Even if she put them at risk, put her father on the opposite side of the war, to help you. She's come home, Robin. It's no surprise that she's staying. It won't be easy, of course, just ask Allen, but he can't stop smiling.

The moment Bassam called her Safia everyone knew Djaq was staying home. That's why Will Scarlett helped tend to the birds. That's why when she told him how she had always wanted to live here, he took it so easily. He smiled, he understood. She left her home for him once. Because a lovely old man held her like a daughter, and Will Scarlett knew what that meant more than anyone. Did he think of Luke? Or did he leave that to you? Safia's brother Djaq was killed in this Holy War, Will's father in England's. Two broken families trying to be whole try it in Acre for awhile. Bassam's blessing sheltered Safia and Will, who understand the kind of flight that would bring you halfway across the world to finally find the missing piece of your heart. But all this talk comes later, when you have no ears for it.

But it's important that you know: she placed her entire life, her entire people, her entire family, her entire past _and_ her entire future on the block for you – pledged it as a bond to Bassam that helping you was what was best for her homeland. Signed the bond with both of her names. Was it better for them, really? In the end? We'd all like to think so. It was better for the homeland of the men she loved.

A Saracen girl with less faith in Robin Hood – who had never seen the extraordinary grace you brought to the table, the grace which allowed you to save everyone – ran to tell the Sheriff's counterpart you were here. And Vaisey set the devilish trap, because if there's one thing Vaisey always knew how to wield against you, it was all the things we don't talk about. Marian, Edward, Allen, Little John, Dan Scarlett – he's played them all like fiddles. Now King Richard. Vaisey always knows where people keep their strings.

Vaisey has never been a soldier, but he's seen what war does to them. And even with the strong, wise king who leads from the front line and inspires the deserved loyalty of such men as Robin Hood, the dangle of peace is not the only thing a hardened warrior leaps at. Suspicion as well, and prejudice against the people he fights against. Vaisey uses Safia against Richard the Lion-Hearted, because he's been playing politics and war with Saracens too long to stop to remember that they are not all demons. And he turns away his faith in his homeland, which so recently turned threatening and dark and twisted rather than comforting and home. And Vaisey aims those instincts, the betrayals of war, right at King Richard's heart. Sometimes peace requires more bravery than war. Sometimes what it requires is trust. But that is the first thing it takes.

And subtlety. Who has time for gray on a battlefield in the desert? No, there is only black and white. King Richard turns to you, betrayal tearing at his heart, and asks: Every day the Sheriff of Nottingham woke up and plotted to kill me – and you did not simply kill him? You could have eliminated all of the Black Knights with one quiver of arrows on your back. But you didn't, instead you run to Acre and leave England unprotected? No! A warrior king has no time for the gray areas of subtlety and politics. If he had, he never would have left in the first place. Those are the facts on the ground, which every general respects above all else – and everything that King Richard sees in those facts are choices you made.

And faced with the conundrum, the gray area of killing the man who saved his life just because he's turned dangerous now, the warrior king defers to the only morality left in this Holy War: Let the desert decide. He ties you in the sun, but there is always a chance, he says, in the desert. And that more than anything makes him realize the world has been too long at war. This time you lot don't even have anything to talk about, except love. You waited until now, because we learned long ago that love doesn't matter the way that real things like politics and kings and assassinations and promises made under duress matter. It matters more. And less. The last choice.

Safia tells Will that she would never leave him, she was only staying home if he would stay with her. The silly boy really hadn't seemed to know that, but it made things simpler later. Safia means wisdom, and she has enough for them both. Will and Djaq were both silly boys, in their time, and Safia helped them grow into more.

Then someone appeared on the desert horizon, and Safia laughed praise to God. And Will Scarlett praised Allah, turning to look at her with a promise to stay, but Allen-a-Dale knew the Devil when he saw him. And their cries then echo a far older one that issues from this land, _My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?_ Sheriff Vaisey arrived and tied Marian to the same post behind you. None of you could look at each other as you burned in the desert. But the blinding sun brought a clarity that the shadowy night of Kalilah did not. Little John faced death and realized that he deserved more, that he deserved to die the final time in the arms of those he had abandoned with his first death. Much spoke of love to you rather than hate. Safia assured Will she would never leave him. And you, Robin Hood, spoke of loyalty and England more than ever. Chose England over Locksley, and whispered the secret: even in the Holy Land, dying for England was dying for Locksley.

But Marian had always found the beauty most easily, even in Hell. It was how she survived so long in the Castle Triangle. "We are in the company of the best witnesses England has to offer." Marry me now, Robin Hood. And it was only the Sheriff's last cruelty that Much was the one who had to look into the eyes of your bride as you exchanged your first set of vows, while you could not. He would have been proud of that one.

And all of England can be proud of this one: Carter came to save you. Carter, the most broken Crusader, whom the Sheriff once twisted into Hell's Dark Destroyer, whom you guided back to the Light, set you all free to save the king from "Saladin's" false offer of peace. You stand in his place, as you have in England for so many long months, and there is a battle for the life of King Richard and the Fate of England.

In the midst of it, the King disarms himself by flinging his sword to save your life. In a way, of course, it's the least he could do. But it also leaves you to protect him with everything you have. Including Marian. Because when you fall momentarily to a traitor in the King's ranks, the Sheriff gets a shot off. It's not one of yours, he's only wounded, but Carter too dies and Much will always concentrate on saving you.

But Marian's on point. She dives in front of Guy of Gisborne and she flings everything she can at him to stop him. She stops him dead in his tracks, the weapons in her raised hands the words of all the betrayals she has enacted on him since you arrived. And they are more vicious than a sword. The final round stops him deader than one. Finally, she tells him the ultimate words of betrayal. "I'm going to marry Robin Hood. I love Robin Hood. I love Robin Hood." Three times.

And now, Sir Guy of Gisborne, strikes Lady Marian of Knighton Hall with his blade for the final time. Always before, these marks of her betrayal, have been when she was masked, under the cover of night. Now he looks into her face under the blazing sun and he strikes to kill. The third strike. The alchemy is finished.

Safia cannot save her. She moved to the King first. Marian has paid the debt for Richard. Locksley has broken to save England. It is finished.

You married Lady Marian with King Richard's royal ring, the least he could do once again. Your darling Marian fell to the sword of the man she had so abused for so long, despite ten thousand warnings. She fell to keep all of England from descending into the Hell she knew better than any member of your gang save Allen. She fell because she knew how easily even a good man could become trapped in Hell – why she saved Allen and tried to save Gisborne. She made ten thousand choices that led to this moment, and in all of them, she chose England and Richard over herself (though never Locksley). She nearly died so many times in Nottingham trying to ransom Locksley with her own body. Now, Guy of Gisborne and Fate itself finally call her bluff, accept her offer. A life for a life. Lady Marian for King Richard. Because no one was there to solve for Robin Hood. The question was never posed to you or to Sheriff Vaisey. It was to Guy of Gisborne and Lady Marian, and she played him with her whole life – played him perfectly to trick him into killing her instead of his King at the crucial moment. She is the Fool's Beautiful White Bird, and she has rescued Lardner. She is Matilda, and she has silenced Tom of Louis then vanished. She is the future Lady Gisborne and she has ransomed the false King and all the nobles of Nottingham. She is the Night Watchman, and she has saved Locksley in your absence.

So even King Richard took up your cry, "We are Robin Hood!" because now more than ever, that is too large a burden to carry on your own.

England has been saved, the debt has been paid.


	29. You Are Robin Hood

**Epilogue**

**_You Are Robin Hood_**

**_

* * *

  
_**

But that is not the end of the story.

If that were the end, then we would have all the time in the world to speak of chivalry and daring and cleverness and love, love most of all. But this story is important, because it is never told this way again. Like for that other man I spoke of, who was a pirate and the best man in the world, when a place called Hollywood – so different than your Sherwood – told his story they gave him the same happy ending they give to yours, the outlaw and the best man in the history of England. Victory, sealed with a kiss. Because that's what you deserve. But the real ending is this: "they were on the fastest horses in the kingdom, and the lead was theirs. However, this was before Inigo's wound reopened; and Westley relapsed again; and Fezzik took the wrong turn; and Buttercup's horse threw a shoe. And the night behind them was filled with the crescendoeing sound of pursuit…"

Your happy ending at Marian's wedding was the not the end of the story, nor is this. Because your wound reopened, and John and Much relapsed again, and Allen took a wrong turn, and Marian's Guy lost his footing. And there was more, so let me sum up.

Sheriff Vaisey has returned to Nottingham, and having been bested he will be an ogre of unprecedented proportions. Sir Guy of Gisborne walked away from his last chance to be a good man, as Marian so foolishly put it when she was desperate and beautiful. Will and Safia are staying to fight the battle of the Holy Land, in the home that has been calling to her for many months now. But the rest of your gang are needed in Sherwood.

Listen to the crescendoeing cries of the people of Nottignham, Robin of Locksley. They await your return like Moses, like King Arthur. When Robin returns everything will be better. Listen to the little child who knows no harm will come to her even as Gisborne dangles her off of a cliff because, "You're Robin Hood."

Will you let Marian die for England only to let it fall in any case? You were always the only man who could save it. You alone know the secret.

The Black Knights are broken, but they are regrouping. The Shadow is still falling.

You are the Light. You are the Grace. You are more than your own personal pain.

Consider this my second to Brother Tuck's appeal. You are needed. You chose to become more than a man. Let the man grieve, the legend must rise from these ashes. Burn if you must, but burn into the Night. Light up the Darkness.

No one deserves more the chance to rest, the chance to avenge, the chance to ease some of the crushing pain in your heart. There is too much. It would kill you. Let me sum up: England is descending into a Vaisey-fashioned Hell. There is too much. You cannot rest.

You have work to do.


	30. Part Three: Battle of Hearts and Minds

**Part Three**

**The Battle of Hearts and Minds**

**

* * *

  
**

Because if the first story was a thousand questions all attempting to measure the same thing – your endurance – and the second was the same question disguised a hundred ways – would you sacrifice Marian for England? – then this last tale is about what happened after you took the pledge, after you gave your answer to this final question: will you give the people your very self?

You can save Locksley and England. The price is Nottingham. The price is yourself.

It's not about choices this time – no one will ask you to make such a choice twice. Losing Marian was the end of Robin of Locksley. This is a battle, a scrum, not a chessmatch. Everything is changing too fast. And like a battle, the lines and the violence take unexpected turns. You brought the war back with you. No more games in England while the King fights in the Holy Land.

You cannot mourn for Will and Djaq, you must call up the reserves. You cannot storm for Marian, you must deal with the new woman of the Castle Triangles.

"Buttercup is set to marry Humperdink in little less than half an hour. That gives us just enough to break in, steal the princess and make our escape. After I kill Count Rugen." That's what was said to the last Best Man on Earth who woke up from a death: you will be with Marian sooner than you think, that gives you just enough time to break the back of the raging werewolf Nottingham has become, save the people of the Shire and provide for your gang. Killing Sir Guy of Gisborne…let that come later.

There is too much, Robin, to sit and dwell on. It's a different fight that's coming, and you must be ready for it.

Of course Vaisey was the first to put it this way, a full two years ago. The Battle of Hearts and Minds, that's where the kingdom is lost and won. If Robin of Locksley died in the Holy Land, the kingdom still needs Robin Hood. And will, long after you lie still in your grave. Deep in the heart of England / Lives a legend / Robin Hood.

Because, Robin, there's something you should know. Prince John does become King. That does not mean you lost. The Battle of Hearts and Minds is far more resilient than the body of Richard the Lion-Hearted, who can be captured or killed abroad. Your enemy will be King, although your liege will live to see England again. This battle is not about King Richard anymore. It's about Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. You'd be surprised how easily those titles transcend small things like the names Robin Locksley and Vaisey.

Tuck is right about – though he's often wrong. He understands this. The battle is for no less than England's Soul. Cerberus and Hades are barking in Hell, because even in the Holy Land they have twisted in violence and blood so long – even there they could not kill England's bright ray of hope. They will unleash everything on Nottingham now, the chosen battleground. There is too much. It will cost you everything to try to save Locksley and England now.

There is too much. You fight for the Soul, not the King. Your final choice, that they'll never ask you to make. I don't think you'd understand the question, but that's why Tuck was clever enough not to pose it.


	31. 31 Total Eclipse

**II.1 Total Eclipse**

**Stars in the Night Sky**

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The first person who has been lost who must be replaced is Djaq. Of course it's Djaq. She is what holds your gang together, who tends to all the things you do not talk about, who goes behind you touching Will Scarlett's face where you struck it and Allen's heart where you broke it. Brother Tuck is not as good as her and every time we see him try, we miss her more. But someone must be the healer, and someone must be the scholar, and someone must be the spark of light to keep the soul of your gang strong as the wintry winds blow. Someone must know what is going on with each of your men and know how to handle their secret and obvious wounds – because you were never good at that, since Acre. Now this second Acre has broken you so completely you scream the unforgivable words in the Forest. But they know, like your last suicide attempt with Gisborne. Djaq's forgiveness purchased theirs, now Tuck's must do the same.

But Tuck is the opposite of Djaq – the way that all the replacements for the lost members of your gang are the opposites of their originals. While Djaq's gift was seeing people, always the person in the legends she told, always the reality of the mythical objects that fell into her hands, Brother Tuck turns everything he touches into an allegory. He cannot see the person behind the myth at all. The inspiration he offers your gang will be very different, and the mistakes he makes will be more numerous. But both of them see a truth deeper than that the rest of us see. He is wise, as she was, and if you listened to either of them more often you'd have fewer problems.

But Brother Tuck is always turning everyone into legends – into far more than the sum of their parts – and so it is a terrible moment for him when he first sees you. This Legend in the Heart of England, Robin Hood, is no more than a man screaming for vengeance – all but fistfighting with a man gone mad with grief in the midst of the villagers of Locksley. You are allowed to be just a man, Robin, but it seems a terrible waste.

After all, a simple man could die when Sir Guy of Gisborne dashed his brains against a rock. But the little girl told you before Gisborne dangled her off the cliff: "You're Robin Hood." Perhaps Robin of Locksley could die in that way, but not you. Brother Tuck will tell you all these things, all the things I've been trying to tell you all of this time. You are the Hope of England. Will you kill that to be with Marian a little sooner? This is not about King Richard or Lady Marian anymore. Locksley and England are bigger than their representatives.

Speaking of representatives, Prince John sends one to Nottingham with an ultimatum: a thousand crowns a month from Vaisey, an impossible sum. And a lovely Habeus Corpus to Gisborne who claimed to have killed you, because you had faked that so many times before. A desperate man will do all kinds of terrible things, especially unchecked by his natural opponent.

Or tempered by his soul's natural foil.

O the fire that consumes Guy of Gisborne now. Watch him spin his lies to tell a story – any story – besides the one he knows is true. Of the day that rage and pain and betrayal consumed him, madded him, broke him, and he fell back on what he had always known before. Struck with his first instinct, to kill what caused him pain, what stood in his way. Then stood blinking in shock in the scorching desert sun. Because she broke the heart, that at its best could hold his dark soul at bay. And when he tears through the woods to find you, the hunt must seem familiar. He looks into his soul every day to find something to check the Fire, or some consolation for the shattered pieces he has lost.

But like Djaq would have been the one to find you in the woods, it is only Tuck amongst the many searchers who finds your body. And he brings you back to life, as she would have done, with almost magical methods and Fables and a quiet, sincere belief in you even after all the terrible flames that she and you have both seen and passed through. Belief in the extraordinary Grace of Robin Hood. But a punch and shout where she would have used a soft word and gentle touch. And like with Djaq, you never really listened – to anyone except Marian, and sometimes not to her. Like you would not listen to me even if you could hear.

But you see the people of Locksley, you hear their cries, and when you were very young, younger than we would have guessed, that became the foundation of your life: to protect and shelter them. The people Tuck speaks of and shows you, who were proud once. They still are of you. Only for you is their Spirit rekindled. That is the Battle before us now, to keep the "flame of England burning." There is always pain, in the fire, even that born of Grace. Djaq would have tried to heal your soul, and we do not know if she could have succeeded; Tuck pushes your shattered pieces forward at such a pace they can hold together a little longer, always a little longer, before the breaks are plain. Stories are made of such momentum, and Tuck is always turning people into Stories.

Much gets himself locked in the dungeon, then tortured (like they could do anything to him on the day he watched you die), then dragged out into the Forest to dig for your "stash" – where he is promptly rescued by the poor remainder of your men. And as the remaining pieces of your gang try to make it work, Tuck does what Djaq would never do: he gets your gang captured to force your hand. His ways are rougher than hers. [But oh, how lovely Allen was in the Dungeons, smarting off to the Sheriff as he must have wanted to do for months. Laugh at the Devil, because he has escaped Hell. No execution can fright a man who has crawled out of the depths of Cocytus. Were I Djaq, I would love Will Scarlett, but, were I Kate, I would love Allen-a-Dale.] And Tuck plays Gisborne's plea for salvation to that end as well. But, again, it was the right choice, because you told him: the bravest, most loyal men in England. You would die for them. And you were responsible for them, because you brought them all back to life.

Tuck was most like Djaq in this: that he had a heart full of love to spare, to spend on everyone, to forgive so much wrong that had been done. Was not afraid to make things worse in order to make them better, as she would not have been. That Tuck who loves stories even more than she does, he turned the darkening of the sun into the return of your light. The Eclipse ended and you returned. Robin of Locksley gave all, but in his body now rests Robin Hood – who is more you than you might think, though less than others and especially Tuck say. You saved your men in a hail of mythic propaganda and Allen was right again, "It's not a dull death. They'll be talking about this for years!" The newfound rhetoric on your lips felt strange, but it was necessary, especially this, "_Our_ England!" Even the day's blue sky darkens, and the night grows blacker still; it will be long before the dawn. You must be busy in the time of darkness, as the minions of Hell flail about in their own mess and boiling pitch looking for whatever it is they ever seek there. This was your last story, in miniature: a death and more pain than you can bear, a duty and those you love in need of protection, a time of darkness and chaos and turmoil that ends in a battle, and then a new sun rising or the old one returning. In the first blink of light it is hard to tell.

You are stars in the velvety shroud that covers your country, the family of Sherwood mere jewels in that terrible tapestry. That is what you have done with your death – just as your father prophesied you would. But eventually, the moon will pass away from the sun, able to block it no more. What will be born there, what that sun will illuminate when it comes – that is what you must fight to determine. You are on Fire, Robin. Do not crumble into ashes. Light up the darkness. Not a wildfire in a forest, but a star in the night sky.

And one last time, we'll end with a thought of Marian – how you buried her ring in the Forest to say goodbye to your love. Because you have work to do before you can be with her again. One last time, we'll remember, and we'll let you rock back in the exquisite grief of this: Marian, the North Star by which you found your way, is gone. But the moon which covers her light will someday pass away, eclipse your love no longer.


	32. 32 Cause and Effect

**A/N: **So this is the last of the daily updates. It's been a lot of fun doing them rapid fire like this, but I plan to be just as regular posting on Sundays. Thanks for the support. See you then for Episode 3!

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**III.2 Cause and Effect**

**What Stories Cannot Do**

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Say what you will about Tuck's rhetoric, it helped you find your stride again. The first time we saw you you were pulling this very trick, making the guards think you had a host of men rather than your mere few, and though Allen rolled his eyes, the words to give you back your purpose needed to be powerful and needed to be repeated. And he was always going to miss Djaq more than most.

The second member of your gang to be replaced was Will Scarlett, and it's Kate that needs these stories most today, although she cannot let them save her yet. There's a tendency, because of her gender, because she bears the name of Marian's mother, to make her the replacement for Djaq or, in time, Marian, but that is unfair to her. All of you boys do it. But the young citizen of Locksley who put up with so much for so long but finally had too much pain, who was angry and strong and clever – not the scholar who spoke to us of Kalila and Dimna to comfort us in death but the boy who saw a key to freedom in the empty chests of con men – whose care for her brother surmounts all, who for the rage of familial pain turned away from all concerns of the greater good. The representative of the people, to remind you what they can and cannot take in your seclusion in the Forest. Who can go among them and vouch for you when something wild happens, because they know her face. And who does Kate's mother remind you of if not Dan Scarlett who was always cutting his losses – sacrificing his hand without a care, telling you not to be stupid about his son's execution, coming to collect Will and return to Scarborough?

You know it's him being replaced because your gang uses, again and again, a machine he must have made before the Holy Land. The carpenter craftsman, like the potter craftsman who tried to go to market in the midst of conscription. We will miss him whenever we look at her, but we will appreciate him more.

And, like all the replacements, she is his opposite. While Will Scarlett could let his family stay quietly in Scarborough, leave his brother for the Holy Land, stay loyal to you over such ties, Kate comes to the Forest only propelled by spears. Her concern for her brother and sister and mother is so primary she gives you away with barely a pause – she will come around, but everything is a choice. And she's right too, the towns of Nottingham have lost an entire generation of men. From that, they will never recover. And, things we do not talk about, it's all to pay a debt that only exists because you saved the King in Acre. Marian is dead for Richard, Locksley dies for England now.

Of course, Kate the Citizen of Locksley, can look after herself, to some degree. And her "You're Robin Hood," sounds different than the girls' on the cliff side. It's closer to an accusation, but there is hope in it still.

But there's someone else here, who reminds us of those from the past. Two brothers who remind us, in their turn, of Tom-a-Dale, the only person you didn't save until Marian herself. The only person you ever considered not saving. Until now.

The wild, foul, "easy ride" seeking, charming and eventually traitorous Irishman whose brother could not inspire him to something better. And Matthew, whom Gisbourne cut down before your eyes, just so he could see the despair wash over you and Kate both. Allen could have warned her, but he never speaks of Tom now that he has reclaimed his own face, his own name, again. Sometimes Gisbourne and Sheriff let their opponents go, so that they can see Marian's face when her hair falls about her feet, so they can gloat to you that rescue came too late, so that Kate's wild tears will sound in his living ears rather than haunt him with the rest of the ghosts howling in Gisborne's soul.

It was into Much's arms that she fell, but that meant more to him than to her at such a moment. Things we won't talk about now, with so much more to do and so many deeper tragedies to mourn.

But there was a third brother, and he is far closer to what you need among your men and allies. He alone of those we have spoken of until now understands the extraordinary Grace of Robin Hood when he sees it – even if it is only in Battle and Conquest that he believes in it. He gave you a lockpick accidentally, and saying the name Richard to him helped you put another piece of your life back together, so he helped you twice before his attempts to rescue you (amateurish, particularly in the light of two years of your elaborate schemes) got him thrown in the "unescapable" cell. Then you both escaped through a drainage gutter, your cleverness and resourcefulness back and swinging you into action.

Quite a story, but it wouldn't change the fact that the Irishman's little brother locked him in there with you. And that little brother told him the difference between you and the Irish King – Finn offers a glorious death for the cause, and you were always bringing people back to life.

Like Matthew, the name of the Milliner's son from long ago. In his sister, who borrowed her brother's belief in stories and came after them to help you. And Allen who knows what it is to be rejected by this gang is first to give his voice to let her join the Merry Men of Sherwood. Which is why, if I were her, he is the one I would love. But I understand, for you are the one who can look into her eyes and say what she really needs to hear, who smiles happily to see her without an agenda, forgives easily for all her sins without the rigmarole your gang gave her. With a man like that around…well, it was nice to see you open your heart to someone new, although I doubt you knew in what way you would in time.

And is this going to be a new habit of yours, appearing magically on the Battlements of the Castle? Because that makes for good stories too. Although it was the man you casually killed that spread the word to your men. So they could watch you fly from atop the castle on their own canopy. Flying over Nottingham, looking out for us all, a shooting star in the Night Sky England has become.

Who saved the Village Men, creating the army you will need someday, as Tuck said. Whom you hope you never have to summon. A story so good it convinces the would-be King of Ireland that a small band of dedicated men does more than an army of slaves. Which, while a great story to tell ourselves, we can put down as one of the reasons there is no King of Ireland, though certainly not the only reason.

While we're talking about stories, Tuck's aren't landing with Allen-a-Dale at all, whom even Djaq soft words could not save when the time came. His whole life is spinning stories. He's finally found one to believe in. Tuck casting it as just another story, a soldier's tale too, is cruel and dangerous – in time, he will find the power in stories of which Tuck speaks, but for now he must laugh and snigger behind his hand to save his soul from sliding back into the Hell he knew before he met you in the forest – a fitting prop to this play the machines of arrows, like when you first saved him.

Gisborne was asked to spin a story for Prince John, sent fighting the guards, to explain that there is no patronage money. And all he saw, with no taste for Vaisey's jokes about catching Caligula in a good mood, was certain death.

And one thing you can always say for Guy of Gisborne, since he was going so wildly mad throughout this tale and must find a way to tell it that won't get him killed, is that he never appreciated the poetry of pain. Torture and even death were always a means to a simple, obvious end. The Sherriff, you, Tuck, even Marian in her time, all know the poetry of terror and pain and death. Gisborne shares this with Will Scarlett's replacement: to them, there is no poetry in pain. Nothing to the fact that it was into Much's arms that she fell. A simple boy who wanted to be a good man with a simple life – worth more than all the ballads of the Earl of Huntingdon. To Kate, there was no Robin Hood to easily blame (even if it was your fault more than her mother could ever know). Tuck told you it was impossible to win over every mind, especially hearts so full of sorrow, but really Kate was just proving herself the opposite of Will Scarlett by going home to her family. Because your stories are only so much false hope. There was only pain and violence and a means to an obvious end, for Kate and Guy of Gisbourne both. Which is a surprise, since his mother was French, but also not: because the poetry of pain is very English.

The fight for this nation's soul has begun. With all this talk of commitment to the cause among the Irishmen, it's a good time to remember yours. Something worth fighting for.


	33. 33 Lost in Translation

**III.3 Lost in Translation**

**A Parable**

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In secret, in an abbey, a man prepares for the bringing of the Light. For ten years he wars with words from two disparate tongues to bring the Truth to Commonsense – without losing Poetry in the Shadows of the Half-Light.

In this abbey, with this secret, a Devil prepares for the assault of the Night and takes the unlit Beacon for his hostage and his weapon. The world is not ready for this Torch, it dispels a different kind of Darkness. A deeper kind, but a less practical one. Few can read the faded print of manuscripts by one flickering candle's light. There is only one match. Only a fool would blow it out to save the Torch.

But the candle is burning faster than we could hope – faster than by its light we can see – and a Servant of the Beacon this Torch represents is fanning the flame to all the more quickly consume it entirely.

The Devil came to threaten with the stolen Torch, in order to kill the Flame, he shape shifted to torture the Impatient Saint – not even for policy, just to show he could – as the Devil always does to make great men Fall. And, as always, he spoke truest of any of us, went to war armed with the things we do not talk about: there is always an explosive little nugget, hidden away for the Devil to find.

So the Weary Saint, breaking his back to return from Rome, threw Holy Water at the Flame that keeps England burning. The Devil even invoked the Saracen Menace and threatened a heretic's death right in Kate's face, threatened the death of Locksley with his arms wrapped around her sister. Which is how you knew she would rebel in the end. Nothing pisses off the Citizen of Locksley more than threatening her family. And though the Devil always knows the strings of all he considers Players, thus his utter terror of what the Princely Cain will do to him, he has never considered the people of Locksley to be Players. Even the Scarlett boys over whom you fled to the Forest, over whom he was nearly killed. To him, they are Sheep who will follow any Shepherd with a firm rod. That is why his rage was never greater than the day when he nearly died rather than "the people who do exactly what I say." Over a complete non-entity.

And poor John, who put all his hopes for everything he deserves but cannot have into the Next Life, took the betrayal of the Church even worse than Tuck – who snuck into the abbey through the toilet because he had to know why. Because he must know the Story, because he believes that it can save the souls of us all. The Greatest Story Ever Told, for all to read, is just what to say to such a man. But the Trapped Saint did not risk it yet, let swords and violence enter his Temple instead.

In Locksley, Kate stood by her mother Rebecca, who in the Bible she has never read in her own tongue chose between her children and fooled one she loves to get her will – but we'll not talk of that yet, then she hid you because Kate knows that Rebecca's broken hope does not have to be her fate. Yours is looking better all the time. No one helped the Devil as he dragged the Moses Monk through their town to convince them he was an Angel who had never Fallen.

Which might be the key to why Allen couldn't really understand why anyone thought what you _called _someone mattered in the Final Judgement. He's worn a hundred faces and names. In hell, at the mercy of the Devil, he found his grace, his self, at last. No Defeated Saint can strip him of his Redemption. Just as no Grace, no Flame, can give his life back to John Little. His soul is still so lost it is not even part of the Battle anymore, for the opposite reason that Allen's remains untouched throughout this tale. That Battle was fought and won already.

And Much too was immune, too focused on trying to knit his soul to a girl on earth – and why not, even the Word of God is in English now – to be at risk.

But for the rest of us:

Kate must break her heart, her soul crumbling at her mother Rebecca's feet as Esau's must have done a hundred times, but she draws the line at kneeling to the hand of a corpse. Even if we took the time to watch how happy she is in Locksley, even after everything.

And Tuck will stand firm and tall, refuse to give an inch to save the Story over the Town. Then he is told the Truth by his hero long before you were reborn, before you even left for the Holy Land the first time. The Desperate Saint showed him the Torch that could ignite the world. And the Temptation was, at last, elegant and beautiful and nearly inescapable when fashioned by the Frightened Saint rather than the Grinning Devil. It's why he recruits them to do his trickiest work. But Brother Tuck will never raise his hand to quench the Flame of England, he stands firm on Robin Hood, his Voice steady on the Rack.

The Battlement Appearance is your new favorite approach, since you became a Rise Angel, isn't it? I almost prefer Allen's terrible joke, but then he knows that in such Tales you must laugh or you will be afraid to see the Devil burnt in his own pitch by his former accolite.

The man who knows the Word of God wherever it hides and the man who knows Hell better than anyone saved the Bible while the Sheriff of Nottingham dug up a grave to call it Holy. Poetic Irony, the Devil laughs in the face of the Crippled Saint as weeks of his life's work burn before his eyes – and he takes his first step toward realizing that it is only that work which he is protecting – not the Torch itself.

But before we talk of True Redemption we must endure the Devil's Counterfeit of it. He never understood the Sheep of the Flock. The way you do, but not the Church. You came to the Temple with a better Story than the Father of Lies.

The Careful Saint was too afraid to admit he stood with the Devil's arms around him in the Temple, but as the Flame of England was fed into the Backfire of Heresy, he repented at last. England was no place for decent, educated men, or for Stories like Robin Hood, he thought. But if even that is too precious for it to hold, what would they do with the tales of a poor carpenter from Nazareth?

In the end, your Faith was rewarded in them all – your Faith which resurrects dead men rather than ransacking their graves.

Tuck chose, held the Torch to the fire; Kate chose, handed you the Key to the hearts of Locksley to escape your bonds; her little sister Maggie chose, refused to listen to the Devil's threats of damnation, a sentence he never could impose; and the Broken Saint chose, condemned the Devil who opposed you. Reclaimed the Honor of the Church in the eye of the People who could tell the Devil when they saw him.

Then he went to France to build a new Torch. Was it near the place, I wonder, where Gisborne sold two souls for a Devil's Dowry? But we are not there yet.

This Tale left the Flame of England burning. It was a fine Tale, although I wonder if England would have rather had the Greatest Story Ever Told. The Devil should have known he could not wipe that away with the Heretics' Flames. So should the Fallen Saint. The Grace turns even the Flames into Holy Light.


	34. 34 Sins of the Father

**III.4 Sins of the Father**

**To Cover The Truth**

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Tuck's specialty is taking the truth and expanding it with stories, making it into something beautiful and unbreakable, but there is a much more common relationship between the truth and stories, and that is using stories to cover the truth. Even from ourselves. Especially from ourselves. And that is what we must talk about here, with Will Scarlett's reluctant replacement and Gisborne's false one, who is his opposite as well. Although a little less than we all thought.

But it starts out well: a man who came from Nottingham, who lost his last parent there in a way that was and wasn't his fault depending on who's telling the story, and roamed abroad then returned to recapture his own – thinking it would knit his soul back together. Someone attractive and dangerous and ruthless, like Rufus. But he understood the poetry of pain, and he laughed to see your tricks, and he cared nothing for making power for himself except to an obvious end that was the opposite of Gisborne's and yours: to protect those he loves. He tossed his son away to avenge his father's death.

In the meantime, Rebecca and Esau smiled to each other, making the best of Matthew's death, forgiving each other by blaming you, and put their lives slowly back together. Smiling as if it is an ordinary day, a story to cover the truth of their torments. Then Rufus the Ruthless comes charging in, no time to appreciate the poetry in this subtle pain, and destroys the entire store and kiln. And Kate stood, unbound but painfully powerless with her mother held in a vicelike grip, as her world crumbled around her. Then he offered Kate a chance to save her mother by playing his strumpet in Locksley Manor – a gross dumbshow of Guy and Marian with none of the subtlety of prolonged pain and softer feelings. A smile, not a healing, was what he demanded. And Kate the Potter had had enough, had her world destroyed too many times. So she got angry and she fought.

The smoke from the fire that consumed her life and her patience to endure it drew you and your gang. She said, many times, that she wished it hadn't. But that's stupid. Just a story she tells herself to cover the truth. Even Marian balked at living in this world without a male protector, and she could brave nearly anything. If even the Night Watchman asks her father for his protection, Kate Potter best take care the way she tosses knights in leafy armor away. But then, Will Scarlett never asked you to save him, when the noose was being measured against his neck – he just believed you would.

She says she had it under control despite the fact that I can't see what her plan was except to be sarcastic and difficult until he decided it wasn't worth it – which _might _have worked with Gisborne, especially if he was worked up over something already, but was _not _the strategy to use here and she certainly doesn't seem to have been planning to submit. Not anymore. But she's so angry (and you can hear the relief warring with her assumed anger) because now she can blame you and Much blundering in rather than admit that she'd finally hit the limit of what she was willing to do to keep some semblance of her old life in this world gone to hell. Just like another citizen of Locksley before her, who nearly hung and who became a legend worthy of prominent mention in Robin Hood lore. That she will not do, so only we will know how she packed her belongings and said goodbye the way her opposite had no chance to do and strode calmly out of the village into the Forest – the first of your gang to do that. And Rebecca still blamed you, for Jacob and Esau both, because she has to stay in Locksley, but her daughter was free of that poetic tragedy at last.

But there was a cost to the Forest as well, as Will Scarlett learned before her with Dan and Luke, and it is watching Tuck's legends fall away into the truth – which is better but less glorious, more beautiful but less comforting. The reality first introduced to her in Allen's faltering banter, which makes me realize that I've never actually seen him talk to a girl besides Marian and Djaq. Neither of whom Kate Potter is replacing. Funny I should think of that.

The story Rufus uses to cover the truth, even with his own son, is Kate's, if she lets her anger burn out of control as she tries to do in the Forest. His false story is a warning about her truth. If she came to value only strength in her reforging of herself, but you are there, looking directly into her soul and asking her to assess it. Is she all right? Is she intact? Did she survive the burning of her world? "Yeah," she whispered, without even thinking. If she had, she would have said no. Stories we tell to cover the truth. And Rufus's story is even more needed for Rufus than for Edmund who hates to watch people suffer.

Little John told a different family story, unable to see how much it was the truth. It gets better, he says, this new life given by you, Robin Hood, when the world turned a person a dead man or woman in the Forest. It doesn't give their family back, even you lost your wife, but in the end you all have each other. Little John just adopted a daughter. And he couldn't see it, because his story is so long and heavy and heartbreaking he cannot see the truth. The stories we tell ourselves aren't always comforts, but perhaps this is, in a way, because a new family would mean the old one is never coming back.

The biggest smile she had was yours, but it was as dangerous as her fake one for Rufus. A child of anger and revenge could have been born today. Your attempt to capture Rufus and Edmund led to a division of assets: Allen and Kate captured by Rufus, Edmund with the rest of your gang. But the most disturbing thing, to me, was the guard you casually killed when you probably didn't need to. Again.

But it was a blessing for both sets of captives. Because Edmund could help Little John strip away the story that has covered the truth his whole life – whom this boy more than most deserves to hear, as Tuck showed us in the Forest coaxing another story out of a mere boy, stories that take the truth and grow bigger and bigger from there – how his father stole from a wedding party and was condemned to die until his grandfather, like Dan Scarlett, paid the price for him. And Allen can try to tell Kate that this is not Hell, merely the Long Night on Earth, but she won't hear it in her fury and desperation, until he finds the way to talk to her at last: and they laugh together. The smile she finds on this side of the End of the World is better than the one she shared with Rebecca, which was just covering the true grief. This smile is the truth that the world is still there after the fire and it is still good even after everything has changed. The truth under the false "fin" of the story she's found herself written into. In their captivity, both are set free from far deeper prisons.

Rebecca spoke to John and welcomed him back into Locksley, remembering the time they were both happy, both belonged somewhere good. To find Rufus. And Little John didn't even notice, because his self-expulsion from Locksley is such a massive story even he cannot come out from under its weight. So it will obscure the truth: that he has built a new home, a new family, he is no longer alone. None of us are alone.

Except the Sheriff. Because if a Scrope betrayed even Henry V, then one will certainly betray Sheriff Vaisey, convince him to send his men away to make up Prince John's patronage. So that Rufus could kill him while he was unprotected. But then, Rufus is only there because Vaisey hated being alone – without Gisborne. Neither you nor the Sheriff kill Rufus outside his father's butcher shop, but only when Edmund grows a spine and Rufus chooses, even as it crumbles about him, the story which covers the truth he has run from and screamed at and beat up his entire life, over his son and the future.

The way Little John does, even as he turns and smiles at his adopted daughter that she should stay, and Allen jokes with her (perhaps more like a brother than anything else), and you turn to her and state a simple request. Stay, and help make this place bearable.

Much's reaction, his painful, "I saw her first," is just the worst, the latest, in a long list. Of things we do not talk about. Because even if it weren't you, it wouldn't be him. No one can make it him. No one can be the story he tells himself so he can deny the truth that its you, always you whom he will love more than ever he loves wife. A woman can't be asked to sit around and cover that truth with a more straightforward and shallower tale. Whether or not he's actually gay.

Allen is who she would love if she were less selfless, but everyone in England would do just about anything for Robin Hood. The story which covers the truth about how terrible England has become.

And Kate is an admirable choice for this: the story that covers the truth that Marian, the love of your life, the magnificent woman worthy of the Legend in the Heart of England, is gone ahead of you. A truth to break a legendary heart, covered with a pretty tale of courtship with a sweet, clever blonde in the Forest.

But not just yet. We invoked Gisborne's name three times in this tale. Don't you know that conjures demons? And that's all he's felt like since he took away the woman who gave him so many stories to cover the truth that finally broke him. And the worst one was this: "This is your last chance to be a good man." There is no such thing, and she knew it might be a curse. Say what you will about what has come before and after – that was the worst thing she ever did to Guy of Gisborne. Now the only option she left him was to become a demon – whom you've now summoned. But that's only a story to cover the truth as well. Gisborne has more than most of us, and we're about to meet her.

I spoke of Marian three times as well.


	35. 35 Let the Games Commence

**III.5 Let The Games Commence**

**In Shrewsbury**

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I asked, long ago, of Sir Guy of Gisborne: Where is Your Heart? It was not with his child or the servant girl Annie whom he made the baby's mother. We watched as he tried tried to appropriate Marian's to fill the void. We saw how quickly he turned demon when hers was yanked back, leaving him empty again. But where was his heart? Where did he leave it all this time? The answer, at last, is: in Shrewsbury.

All Guy of Gisborne has ever wanted was someone to look after. That's because he didn't once. When it really mattered. To the person who had always looked to him for protection. For one very simple reason: he had not the means to protect her. That is why he knew, better than anyone, that he cannot have Allen and Marian without Vaisey's favor. That is why Vaisey should watch out – because he didn't help Guy protect those he truly loved in the Holy Land. So Gisborne has no more use for him. It was never for Vaisey's sake that he was loyal to the Sheriff of Nottingham. We thought he had never known the joy of love until Marian, it turns out he has known all too well the agony of being powerless to protect someone who depends on you.

Her name is Isabella, but we shall call her Ophelia.

You met her in the wood, running from men chasing after her. How many times had she tried to escape hell? Before the Grace arrived and chased away the demons who pursued her? But Allen's choice was never open to her. Denmark's a prison, for Ophelia far more than Hamlet, who went to Germany while she was passed from one man to another, each wilder and more terrible than the last, like an auction. Sold by the boy she looked to to protect her. It could drive you mad, and if you are Ophelia, eventually you take to the River to escape. But the Undiscovered Country pursues you.

And for all she looks like Marian more than any of those I've mentioned, that was your first thought when you saved her and she turned to face you, it is Ophelia we should remember. Because here, at last, is Marian's replacement – and she is her opposite more than any of the others. Where Marian was strong, she is painfully weak. Marian put on a show of softness to cover her strength, Isabella a veneer of power to cover the fact that she is broken into more pieces than any of us could count in a lifetime. She is frightened all the time, she lives in fire, and, like you, the only thing she has to keep herself from falling apart is forward momentum. But she has no direction provided by Brother Tuck to guide her. She just can't stop.

And unlike Ophelia, she knows exactly how to present herself to men. To win their trust, to collect protectors for herself because that is how Gisbornes see the world. More men to shelter to her than even Ophelia had – the absent Laertes and the callous Polonius are both Guy of Gisborne, and you are Hamlet. She told you she was a maid – a decoy for the real Lady Thornton making her escape – to win your trust, to get your protection. She knew exactly what to say to win your affection. Then she returned to her brother, speaking the language of their second homeland, of the place where the Bible is being translated into English near where he sold her to the Devil because he was afraid of what the world would do to them. Because he has always thought that Hell was a place on Earth, and that it was reached through powerlessness and poverty rather than violence and death. But we will get to why.

For now, Lady Isabella Thornton showed us how well she could play you and Gisborne both. And we saw her, in the moment after she learned who pursued you, look at the brother who did not recognize her and once sold her into Hell knowingly or unknowingly but undoubtedly selfishly, and then to the outlaw who seemed momentarily powerless to help her and no great friend to nobles. And she chose you. For all that is to come, never forget that: she chose you first. She thought she never had choices, would never hear that everything is a choice, but she did choose. It's one of the first things we saw her do. And she chose you. That's why I tell you: unlike Ophelia's fate, this all could have gone very differently. But you were broken too. And you were rising into the Night Sky, merely riding out the Eclipse. You were not a man to help a woman put both of your selves back together in each other. But that was what she wanted. Ophelia offered that to Hamlet once too, although she did it even more poorly than Isabella will. But Ophelia started whole, and Isabella started shattered.

Gisborne brought the elite soldiers of Prince John home to Nottingham to capture you, but what he really had in court was not an elaborate dance for his life and position – it was a crash course in the poetry of pain. He herded you and your men through the Forest and then confronted you with a starved lion. Isabella helped you escape, and she threw out her sword to block Gisborne's killing stroke, before she returned to him as Marian always did. Spun it admirably afterwards, especially for someone who hasn't seen Guy since she was thirteen years old – a child bride who fetched a fair price. The Devil took quite a prize that day – it was two souls that Guy of a Stolen Gisborne sold. Can Shrewsbury be repaid now? With a gruff hand outstretched to offer belated protection? We shall see.

Speaking of paying old debts, Little John was the only one to escape the army of Prince John. And the story he enters by escaping that one is the cruelest retelling of his impossible redemption yet. Because what Bertha of Bath and her traveling circus first appeared to be is exactly what Little John should be allowed to do. A band of men and young boys, sheltered from the cruel world in a way that is gruff and wild and befitting such a man but ultimately kind and loving. A strong matriarch, kind and strong and gruff like Papa Bear, who smiled at Walt most of all. But it is a lie. Little John cannot even reject it, turn away from this offer of a new life to redeem his old one, because it is as false as Bertha's rigged fights.

The matriarch is a slaver, not merely a desperate bookie with fewer scruples than most. And she offers John's head to the Sheriff to save her own neck, and we knew this whole nontraditional family was false the moment she called him Vaisey.

Saving Walt from the falling beam should have been redemption for not being there when his son was crippled, but Little John cannot let himself be redeemed. And going down in the fight, sacrificing his pride in strength of arms, for being too proud to ask his wife and son to come with him when he was dead in the forest. I wonder, however, if he let himself hope – because his insistence that he was only waiting until you arrived sounded thin and his rage when he found out the truth about Bertha was incredulous and broken. Little Walt overhears Bertha's plot and is sold earlier than planned for his pains – but he escapes to warn John in his Lion's Mask that the killing stroke is coming just before it falls. Even Vaisey didn't want the slavery money, which is saying something as desperate as he is – I don't even want to know what he did with the cows. He never valued money until now, it was just as a way to keep score and pay mercenaries. You were always fighting over something that didn't really, _really _matter to him in itself – until now. Because even lowly merchants are muttering directly in the face of the man who once coerced all the nobles in the land into signing a Pact commemorating their intended Treason.

You show up just in time, having trapped Gisborne, sister and the Black Elite of the Prince in their enclosed camp with their little lion in what has been kindly described as "not exactly your best plan" but this story is so not about the Lion which keeps rearing his head as if that's what this fight is still about, and the children of Bertha's Circus Maximus are freed, taken to an orphanage in Locksley. They should have gotten a protector in Little John, to match the gruff but kindly mother Bertha at first appeared to be. John should have been given that. But this bright clearing is the only little world where they can be sheltered, the rim of light around the Eclipse, in the Long Night England now endures.

John kneels by Walt and says the words that should ransom him – should be his realization that the Forest Family holds his soul together now, that his purpose is great and mighty and redemptive, that he deserves a family because he is the greatest father in Nottingham – but he does not believe them. He says them to be kind, because you cannot tell a small, adorable boy with red hair who already loves you like the father he never knew that if Little John took him as his son, it would mean admitting that his own son was never coming back.

And like the other woman's story that could not quite cover the truth today, Kate's pretty little tale was pushed aside in favor of Marian's replacement, whom we have not yet learned is her opposite. But we should have: Marian would never run away. And she told us: "if you had any idea what he's done to me…"

Vaisey grunted at Gisborne that he failed to kill you again, and he ignored Isabella entirely – like Claudius always did Ophelia – and you told Isabella she didn't have the option you offered in the Forest to the maid of Lady Thornton now that she was Gisborne's sister. It was a bad lie, Robin, especially since you couldn't quite take your hands off her face which looked so much like Marian's – especially when she was trying to look strong, especially when you were forced to watch her stand staunchly beside Gisborne. The man who couldn't protect her when she needed it most. Riches and power never mattered to either of the women Sir Guy offered to protect – but that was the only way he understood love. That and oaths sworn before God, like Holy Matrimony, as if praying that those could cancel the Bond he sealed with Hell. But we'll get there. All too soon.

The pieces are all in place now, the last of the reserves slotted into her proper alignment. That's how you know: everything's about to go to hell.

Let the Games Commence.


	36. 36 Do You Love Me?

**III.6 Do You Love Me?**

**A Clue: No**

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A single question is asked over and over again in this story. Aloud by Prince Cain but by others as well, each time more desperately. They should all know better, Vaisey more than the rest of you. They're his words, after all.

A clue: this is not a love story. Tell me you would rather have a woman, Gisborne, than all this.

But that's why this next set of stories is so hard to tell, because we've been trained to see your adventures as love stories. We've enjoyed them. And even when they were convoluted and terrible, they were love stories. Conflicting love stories that went to war within every heart and fought over every soul. And they burned, but they were good. What has replaced them is the cold, flat legends of Tuck and the petty personal vendettas of Kate, and they ring so hollow after the glories of the Romps of the Merry Men and the fantastic triangles of Lady Marian. But she is dead, as Davita before her. We chose Richard and England. This is not a love story.

This is the story of how Hell came to Nottingham. This is the story of how the Gatekeeper, who was so good at letting out the forces of Evil in maniacal little bursts, was removed from his post. The Prince of Lies sends his minions in the dead of night to awaken the Devil's Accolite and coo about love as everyone knows to do with Guy of Gisborne, who wears his strings out where everyone can see them. Yet they still get him wrong, in the end. The Prince of Lies speaks of love Gisborne has always wanted and power he needs to protect his sister, whom once he failed so terribly. If only he will kill Sheriff Vaisey.

We never talk about Vaisey anymore. In a way, we have never really needed to, as talking about you is talking about him in reverse. But that's just what we should be watching: you and he have been perfectly balanced in this interminable game – back when this was a love story and you could maintain any kind of balance. Before Davita fell, then Marian. Before we chose Richard. Before Tuck took you under his wing and turned you into a Myth just when the Sheriff's power over the Hearts and Minds of the nobility of England was stripped away in shame and the great Pact of Nottingham for which so much love was sacrificed became only so much useless paper. Your ascent is balanced by his inevitable descent. And nothing scares me more than Vaisey, alone and wild and rampagingly helpless in the castle – not to mention browbeating merchants then ranging out to _pay for_ cows and goats in the markeplace or all but begging Gisborne to stick with him. He is so alone and he is so small and suddenly he looks so very old, just as you are growing larger and greater and more connected and more immortal every day. Until there's so very little left that's human. You could kill him now. The sight of Vaisey alone and vulnerable frightens me because desperate men do terrible things that even the most sociopathic schemers would not imagine, because the Conduit of Evil for England breaking down means that it will come from everywhere at once, because he is still your Dark Mirror. And since you never show us your inner demons, we must see them through Vaisey.

You came to Locksley to collect the men you once rescued from a war in Ireland and asked them to fight the war of England. And your elegant marriage of Locksley and England – you know us, and we fight for King Richard – should have been enough. Instead the secret of the love story was covered with Tuck, all holy imperative as prophets always are – we must, we _must _thwart Prince John – and Kate's down-to-earth rationalizations – he's a pretender, this is not treason, help us.

And this story does try to be a love story, that's what makes it so hard. Kate fell, having to watch the men she cajoled to this fight falling around her, a penance for bringing them here. She stares around, horrified that no one sees, because the idea of dying alone with no one to notice is heartbreaking now that she's traded family for the company of legends. The men of Robin Hood lore in which she is not a famous name, because her stories are always so small. A knife in her side, like Marian who died in the Holy Land. And Tuck looks, for a moment, just as flummoxed as Djaq did then. There is another physician onhand (because the Prince of Lies used a decoy) to "will the blood back into her." And that must have been hard to watch, Robin, because the comparison is as inescapable as the thought that if this man had been in Acre…well, it's no wonder you needed a Rebound.

Hell of a choice. The Prince of Lies thought so too, because Ophelia twisted, like Proteus, into whatever shape he'd prefer. Offered to do so openly, and showed us all that she is a shape-shifter of surpassing skill and shocking instability. She knew how to collect a new protector – even distract him from his Caligula games with Guy and Vaisey – because this is not really a love story. It is the story of how well Proteus can play everyone: helping the villagers with the burning Church, giving money to the cheeky thief who smiled at her suggestively in your desperate need to escape the retelling of Marian's tale, saying that the Prince of Lies begged her defiance, crying "King John!" in triumph to that very man, offering her own name up for his pleasure. She changes so fast no man can hold her, so no man will ever catch her again. It would take a legend to stay with her now. Her life has never been a love story, the first thing she ever told you.

That's why she believes it would save her. That's why she believes love makes things easier and more beautiful, thinks that it doesn't burn the way Hell does. She should ask you, you could tell her. Little John could tell her. Her brother could. But she has never met Marian, so she can believe that this is the story of a man like Robin Hood, the Legend over all of England: that he caught Proteus and stood with her at the Crossroads at Midnight, held her through all of her lightning fast changes, loving her and protecting her as she burned and froze and pierced and melted in his arms until the Break of Dawn, when she was reborn like Eurydice into the Light of a new day. A light she has not seen for seventeen years.

But you were not equipped to save her. You were too broken yourself. You started well, of course. While the Prince of Lies could not even see the cognitive dissonance between asking people to love him then gleefully burning down their church, you listened to her plan and put it into action. But all you ever claimed to share with her was hatred. And the camp. She obligingly took the new shape you offered, like the part you gave to Allen once. But he was only a simple conman. She is a shape-shifter, there is only so long she can stay one shape. Even one so beautiful.

So your parallels between those two have to end at this: Isabella can get you into the Castle and Allen can get you out. Should you have asked why Isabella can throw open the gates of Hell which Allen knows so well how to escape? Did you notice how quickly Kate who half-died threw her health even further into the ring, placed herself as the victim of the King's Evil, the Citizen of Locksley the false King of England cannot heal. Will Scarlett would have thought of the plan himself, but Kate Potter is not equipped to extinguish the fury in her heart by making something beautiful in the Forest. So she must fight with you and sacrifice to cut that part of her heart away. But her story, her small tale, "He burned down our church," is such a small thing to make her embarrass a future king, but it's also the best reason for doing it. Because Prince John the Tyrant is a collection of tiny stories that must have their comeuppance in one of Tuck's humiliating Legends, even if all either version offers is a shared hate.

So while this Farce was acted out, your gang stole the bribes the Prince of Lies gave to the nobles of the land to win their loyalty – hoping that this would cancel the Faustian deals to which they had agreed. And as the Prince of Lies called on the Might of God to recognize his Divine Right, the Devil's Accolite attacked Hell's Gatekeeper, who always liked him, who jokes as he dodges his apprentice's sword. Who tries to explain that this is just Caligula's mad game (and who wants to die over that? Almost as bad as over a complete non-entity), but Guy of Gisborne just rolls his eyes and swings his sword and explains succinctly that what he has done in Hell has never been about Prince John or Sheriff Vaisey. It was always about Marian. Now Vaisey cannot even help him protect Isabella, whom he loves much less than Marian and Allen. That is the only thing that ever stood between the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne's blade.

But what Vaisey said when Guy dangled him off the Battlements on which you love so to appear may be just as true. Especially since he lost Davita, perhaps Vaisey always loved Guy as a son. He certainly would have been an awful father, but like Rufus he tried to make him strong and able to survive the dark world he saw, and he stroked his hair to wake him when he had to tell him that everything he loved had abandoned him. And when the dream of love Guy had once twisted into the waking nightmare of Vaisey, Sir Guy chose him over Marian in the Holy Land.

But this is not a love story. So Guy of Gisborne killed his Dark Father, the man who raised him instead of the wonderful soldier who returned broken from the wars. And Vaisey, who always speaks truer than the rest of us, whispered in parting a warning to his son – in Hell, nothing is as it seems.

The Dark Parables of the Sheriff and the Ovidian Legends of Isabella are no more comforting replacement than Tuck's Necessary Myths or Kate's Comfortingly Small Stories. This tale is no replacement for a love story. Nothing makes us feel this as much as the only hand Sheriff Vaisey has outstretched for love from anyone but Davita is swatted away impatiently by the outbreak of Hell.

But their victory is not complete. Because in the same wild story in which your heart twitched in its chest, Vaisey's finger did the same on the cart that came to take him away. A man denied his fledgling attempt at love becomes a Shadow that falls over the land, waiting to strike. Harder to kill every day.


	37. 37 Too Hot To Handle

**III.7 Too Hot To Handle**

**And Then They'll Love Me**

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There is another kind of story trying to take over this one, and it is the saddest one of all. The Grand Epics of Tuck have kept you going through the pain, the Personal Vendettas of Kate have rallied men to your side. The Dark Parables of Vaisey now will rescue Guy of Gisborne from his self-fashioned Hell, and the Ovidian Legends begged by Isabella will condemn her to her own. But there is another story that is twisting them all out of shape, and it is the saddest story of them all, because it ends: "and then they'll love me."

Prince John is someone who understands love even less than Guy of Gisborne, and his story has always ended, "and then they'll love me," desperate and petulant and small. A story worthy of the angel who threw a fit and had himself tossed out of his one and only home. And his story infects the Dark Parables and the Ovidian Legends, although Guy and Isabella have the grace not to say it aloud.

Let us tell these tales which twine around each other to produce two resurrections and one damnation along with the small, desperate story we whisper to ourselves – the one that makes the others possible.

Ophelia grew tired as the sun grew hotter. She stood in a room with two men who demanded constant shifting of her shapes. Each time Laertes looked at her he wanted a different shape, and the Prince of Lies wanted only one, but he demanded it constantly. She stepped outside and lifted her hair up off her neck as her shoulders slid down and she began to settle into that impossible-to-know form that a shape-shifter assumes when she is alone. And you pulled one of your sneak flirts, and she got scared, "God, don't do that." But this story is all about her trying to let her true face show for you and you not seeing it.

Prince John thought he did, and he took the pathetic little story he whispers to himself and set the grander stories in motion. He took Proteus aside and whispered his story into her hair – freaking her out because she couldn't figure out what shape he wanted now. He stoppered the wells throughout Nottingham, but then he will bring the people water from his own personal stores. And then they'll love him. He will outplay Isabella and then she will see that it is he and not Robin Hood who is worthy of her loyalty.

Then to Guy of Gisborne, who did try to warn him. Kill Hood, with pleasure, but, quiet and raw, "Both of them?" Yes, yes, kill your sister and take power, the Prince of Lies hissed in impatience, too furious to even do this properly. But Guy of Gisborne never wanted these things for themselves. They were gifts for others. And then they would love him. He will cut out his own heart and his own soul for Marian or Allen or even Isabella, but the power he wants – the Sheriff's title he begs again and again – is so that he can protect his family.

So that when he sees Proteus go to the clearing and shift into the shape she assumes for you, when he shackles you together in the Forest, he can offer his sister to whom he owes so much a second chance. The chance Marian would never take at his hand.

And Proteus stood there with you, offered to assume any shape you liked. Suddenly couldn't figure out quite which one you wanted, your ears so full of holy man Tuck's mistrust of a creature who can so easily change your shape. Because he believes that the truth will set us free, his fire burns away everything that does not work, he cannot understand the kind of blaze that could make a person melt down their soul and twist it into ten thousand shapes in order to hide the truth. But Isabella knows the power of constant transformations – what it obscures and what it protects and what it gives. Just one transformation among hundreds she does daily and then you will love her.

But the moment when her brother tries one last time to rescue Marian's Replacement is Proteus's masterpiece. As she stood pinned to the spot with both of her chief protectors screaming at her for her ever-shifting shapes, she stood poised for an exquisite moment in three shapes at once. And in the fight that followed, it was impossible to tell whose side she was on.

But she chose you. She left that shape up until you abruptly demanded another, "You made me think we might have a future together," and she stopped dead, and got real, because she was frightened by just how much she wanted that shape. That beautiful shape that could ransom her from Hell, a chance to rest, a man to stand with her at the Crossroads at Midnight as she changed furiously under his hands, holding her as she burned and froze and pierced and dissolved until the Break of a New Dawn. The resurrection of the Legend worthy of Ovid's Metamorphosis. But, because she is a Gisborne, she believes that something so beautiful must be purchased with treachery, with a soul twisted into a hard and cold shape. So she shifts into the Sister of Gisborne who can make demands of her brother, and she uses him to give you the chance to strike and escape.

And she trusted you to see her true form, the shocking fire of her rage at the center of her body, the wild current of Hell's Fiendfyre that melted her into ten thousand different shapes, for the man who condemned her to Hell seventeen years ago. And you eased her hand away from the sword, because damn if that wouldn't scare anyone. And this is not the love story of your life. Only moment ago, you called her name. You are a Legend, but not the kind that can catch Proteus and stand with her at the Crossroads.

When you came to them, you wanted to leave as soon as possible. Because Isabella is not Marian. You tell her, as she tries to get you to stand still with her here, that you and she could go any way that she likes so long as they left. And Ophelia, far away in Elsinore Castle, said to Hamlet, "I was the more deceived."

But she rallied, and changed tactics. She asked what the shape of this Marian was, so that she could assume it. And then you'll love her. But she is the child bride of Hell, she is not equipped to hear the old love song now humming in your ear. I didn't know how very much I'd missed her until I heard her music again. Neither had you, from the look on your face.

And perhaps it was the siren call of Marian's name you summoned before the fight that helped free Guy of Gisborne where you had tied him to the tree, but probably not. Because while to us Isabella is Marian's Replacement, to Guy of Gisborne she is her Original. His desperation to protect a beautiful blue eyed, black haired woman who cannot be made to understand that wealth and power is worth the price of your soul is not about stabbing Marian in the Holy Land. Rather _she_ was about this: a scared thirteen-year-old girl who clung to her brothers hand and begged him to tell her that everything would be all right even as she prepared to leave her only family member who had not been consumed in flames because she caught the eye of one of hell's monsters and was sold to him. In Hell, Ophelia learned to burn. And, in France, Laertes took the money from the sale and rampaged through the world without a care for the torment of his sister in Denmark's Prison.

But this is not just the story of yet another torture Guy of Gisborne endures in Hell. It is the last one, because he has seen, at last, that no one wants the protection he daily sells his soul to provide. They want yours.

So you took Proteus's back way into Hell to save the villagers.

In a smaller, more desperate story, the villagers of Locksley took the water you stole to bring them and were thus refused the love gift Prince John had planned to bring them. So that then they would love him. Kate took her personal stories and Tuck his burning epics and they were flummoxed without the stories you tell, of love and honor and compassion, so they ran to the stream. They took the baby named Robin, a name of strength for these troubled times when even if a robin had landed on his crib the day he was born they might have missed it in the shadows, and other sick to a dry ditch. Hell damned up the spring of life in its rage. Kate was captured, and Tuck fell down in despair. John stabbed the dry ground and Allen and Much swallowed drily against the dust and ashes in their mouths.

Because all the water was in Hell, drowning you and Ophelia as her brother looked on in rage. And in Elsinore Castle, another Ophelia sang the broken snatches of other people's love songs as she tumbled into the rushing waters. But Proteus is not so easy to kill, nor are you. She was merely hardening, the raging fire growing cold at last. Soon she will not be able to change, so she begs you to wrap your arms around her and hold her as she settles into a new shape for the last time. And she chooses what she thinks will suit you best.

But she couldn't know, as she tried to fill the Marian-shaped hole in your heart, that it was not her face you saw, her voice you heard, or her frightened body around which you wrapped your arms in this place of cold death. It was not Isabella Thornton whom he heard offer to live in a little house with him and their four children, somewhere quiet and safe and away from all of this mess. It was Marian who wrapped her arms around you and kept you warm in the dark, cold night of Hell. It was her music that hummed in your ear, and Marian reached through the desperate shifting into her form that Isabella was attempting to touch your heart. And your bright angel showed you the ring, the third ring, through which you could escape Hell at last. The minute you held your bow in your hand again, we all knew that you would be all right – beyond this present scare. Because you told us when you proposed: Marian is your bow. Nothing made it truer than that you missed at first, because coming back to life is hard work. All Marian ever needed to find you was the smallest opening, and she would fly from Heaven to Earth faster than a thought to find the other half of her heart, and Isabella provided that opening.

I didn't know how very much I missed her doing that until this moment. Nor did you. "I can shoot an arrow through that ring." Damn straight. Isabella, the child bride of Hell, scoffed that redemption, that resurrection, could be so easy. "But you're forgetting one thing: I'm Robin Hood." Damn. Straight. I didn't know how very much I'd missed you until this moment.

But Isabella's fire still burned to hot when she was lifted out of the water, the rope burned and broke under her hands. And she was so afraid, but you caught her because at this point it would be rude not to. She fell at your arms sobbing in gratitude for saving her, for finally staying and holding her at the Crossroads in Hell and pulling her through. But then you changed the game on her as she tried to show you what she shape she had chosen in the Dark and Cold. Because she has lived in Hell for most of her life, and she has forgotten how angels reach in to save us. She would not recognize the touch of one if she saw their cold burning light all around her. She did, and she missed it, when the angel hummed an old love song in your ear. Because this is a love story, just not hers.

Or Kate's, who saw you rise again to life before her eyes and began to hope. She knew better, in the end, because she thanked you just as profusely for taking you with her. But then Ophelia turned to Hamlet and begged him to leave all this Denmark nonsense behind and run away with her, and you had no time for that shit. You turned to this broken shape-shifter who fashioned a shape you loved when you saw with her in the dark and cold waters of Hell itself (and then you'll love her), and you told her that this was _not _the shape you wanted from her. That you were a Legend, but not the kind that could catch Proteus. That this was a love story, just not hers. She stopped dead, and she tried to muster the heat for one last switch, "I'm not her!" It would never be enough. Just before her brother returned, Isabella chose hate. Because after all you did for her, you did not love her. She broke the last protection she had for her soul for you, and then you did not love her.

This is a betrayal deeper than anything Marian ever pulled on Guy, because Guy was never this broken, and Marian never promised Guy a future together except once, under a duress he knew was not sincerity. Proteus thought she was the love story of a Legend like Robin Hood, and instead you abandoned her at the Crossroads to her shifting madness. And somewhere in Denmark, Hamlet abandons Ophelia to Elsinore.

Elsewhere, Guy of Gisborne is given the Keys to Hell. He killed his Dark Father and his broken sister and the man he tried to blame for his murder of Marian, and Hell loses one of its minions. I don't think he realized until the Keys of Nottingham were given to him that he doesn't need them. Or until the lords and ladies stood to toast him that he hates these people. He never wanted these things for himself – they were gifts he wanted to give to others. And then they would love him.

Now there's no one left to set free or even to lock away. Protecting someone he loved was the only thing that ever kept Guy of Gisborne in Hell. Now, armed with the Keys, he simply leaves. Because he has no one left. Because Marian and Allen and Isabella were the only thing that ever stood between Guy of Gisborne and the Light of Day. This is the first of three times he will cut his bonds. The rule of alchemy says that there must be three, as it took three to damn his soul, before he can be redeemed.

So a double fight ensued when Prince John fired him and Isabella settled into her final shape as the Loyal Follower of the Prince of Lies. Guy's freedom was counterpoised by his sister's fall, just as it was seventeen years ago. There was a hilarious moment when you shoved Ophelia into Laertes and everyone shrugged and switched fighting partners because no one can keep track of the free for all in Hell. Kate let herself out in the melee and you and Guy dropped John and Isabella into the water before turning on each other.

You mocked him that after all he suffered and all those he killed to get the Keys to the Gate, he ended up an outlaw like you. And Guy of Gisborne laughed, "Never did you much harm." Damn straight. The last time the Gate of Hell was down he reached up for Marian's hand to pull him out, and she couldn't. He had the power to make the jump by himself all the time. He was always simpler than Proteus. What held him was taken away by the very forces clumsily trying to keep him there. Because they did not understand that Guy of Gisborne came to hell out of fear and desperation at being unable to protect someone who depended on him and that he stayed in hell to save those he loved. That was all that ever stood between Guy of Gisborne and the light of day.

And you, finally back from the dead, could once again give life to those who were dead men in the ditch. You set the water free as Marian had you. The price was Isabella. This story could have ended very differently. Everything is a choice. I wonder if Allen could have saved her – but Ophelia would never looked twice at Rosencrantz, even if he was the one with the best shot at helping her find her way out of Hell. But he more than any of the others deserves this moment when the life flowed back through Locksley over which you once picked England.

The sunlight of your smile, which Tuck and all of your gang shared. Enjoy this moment, because as Little John can tell you, coming back to life is a terrible ordeal, but it is also as beautiful as John Little himself. You found your old story again, "This is what you do," you whispered, finally remembering the old song. "No, _we _do it well," because you are not alone. The water is back, and so are you.

But there is a cost.

Yours is not the only story now. The Ovidian Legend begged by Isabella is dead, because she realized abruptly that she was in a Revenge Tragedy. The Parables may have saved Guy of Gisborne, but he stands in danger of another one: Christ warned in the Holy Land over which men fight that if a man expels a demon without filling his soul with something else, another would return twice as bad as before. And Prince John grew impatient with his desperate little tales and stepped up his plans.

But this is still a love story. Yours and hers. Because even on opposite sides of life and death, from Heaven into Hell, Marian's heart found yours.


	38. 38 The King is Dead Long Live the King

**A/N:** So, I just wanted to let y'all know that I have rewritten the last two chapters "Do You Love Me?" and "Too Hot to Handle." LadyKate's review about convoluted mess was right, and I'm not entirely sure if the problem's fixed, but I took a stab at it. There is a new theme to unite them that those chapters introduce and is referenced in this one. If you don't want to go back it's about how the love story we know has been replaced by the Cold Epics of Tuck and the petty personal vendettas of Kate and the small, desperate story of Prince John that ends in, "And then they'll love me." Enjoy!

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**III.8 The King Is Dead, Long Live the King**

**The Hand That Signed Magna Carta**

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Because here's a thing little spoken of in Robin Hood lore: Prince John does become King.

But then, a King is a funny thing. It's a shape that melts in your hands and drips through your fingers the closer you bring the flames of Hell or Heaven. Even the common, everyday flames of Earth. It's a shape that anyone can assume, for the length of a story, in a flash of light from the long hidden sun. Sometimes that's all you need.

After all, stories are powerful things. They can do all kinds of things.

Make petulant boys into the rightful heir to the throne (which he isn't, actually, but we were denied a second King Arthur). A glorious story of the Lion Heart meeting his end at the hand of the infidels (by Lucky George, I wish he'd said that shit in front of Djaq). And suddenly Prince John can rearrange the country to suit him – take Nottingham for his seat of power to set himself on guard against the north and south, throw away governerships in a drinking game, make laws and collect taxes and wage war and burn and pillage to his heart's delight in order to bedeck his coronation gown with rubies. Because of a simple story of no more than twelve words.

A little story from a little man. The smallest and most petty man we have yet met, who would rearrange the entire country in a fit of pique at being given a generous pension in his forced retirement. Your former teacher, who had so much honor his mean little body could not hold it all, so it spilled over into better men and left him staring after it in dismay. He got lost, and he had a wax figure of Richard made, and the brought the crown to Caligula to change the world and set him back on top of it.

And the shape Isabella picked when her heart hardened in the cold of Hell is as fantastic, in a dark and twisty and hating-you kind of way. She is no longer Ophelia, because she was too strong to go mad. If she hadn't been, she would have gone mad long ago. There is a danger to Claudius's shape (and I don't just mean Hamlet), but it allows her to angle with the best of them for the most pivotal position in the country and to survive the new King's wildest fluctuations with grace. To draw the eye of her opponent to save her life, when a little man mistakes her for Gertrude. To get what she always wanted, in a way that plays everyone and lets her feel strong. Her favorite shape ever. And it was a story she told herself when you ripped away the old one that allowed her to forge this splendid shape.

The Archbishop, the Strong Saint, saw the shape of the king and nodded wearily to Caligula, grimly resigned himself to this new story. This new and petty creature the shape of a King would have to bend itself around.

But none of the stories fooled you. There are truths you hold to with a fierceness only legends can manage, with a love so few can sustain. And angels come to whisper new truths in your ear. You would know if the King were dead.

And it is under Kate's hands, the Citizen of Locksley, that the shape of the King first starts to melt and change. As you despair with the same grim resignation of the Powerful Saint, the people of England you have taken under your wing begin to change the meaning of a King. Because this fight is changed, especially if John will be King someday (soon). The England of Robin Hood can survive that, if you make preparation now. Just look how the idea of a new King melts away under the hands of the Citizen of Locksley, the ordinary woman thrown in among heroes.

And tossed into a grave with you to hide while Prince Cain and the Smallest Man We've Ever Met beat the false body and lament that they were too stupid to start disseminating rumors for the past several months while the wax figure was being made. Because they are men of very little stories with terribly sad endings, they do not know how powerful larger stories can be, even as they use them so deftly. They think it's all about the crown, not the tale of Richard's death.

But with the waxen king melted on a false pyre (which I think might be enough for the Politic Saint, as it's proof of the right story), the centrality of the crown is a lucky thing. Because the crown is stable, it still exists long after the Kings have come and gone. Long after John's hand was forced to sign Magna Carta, there is still the crown. Ask Ian Hamilton and the crew in the pub with him that fateful night about the Stone of Scone.

Or Laertes what he would like to do to Claudius at the end of the Revenge Tragedy if he hadn't been poisoned. There is a backslide on the road to redemption if you do not allow yourself to find a new purpose. Guy of Gisborne goes back to Hell to kill Isabella, who tells him dead or alive doesn't matter. Hell is on earth, and she's been there for the past seventeen years. She is strong enough for it. It will last an eternity anyway. And that's just enough of a story to keep our darling Guy from wanting to condemn his soul to that. And she offers him a way back to his old haunt in Hell.

Then Claudius asks if they can start again, carve their own family out of the mess, but Guy refuses to apologize in order to gain a place in Hell. The whole value of Hell, now that there is no one to protect, is the stories it keeps alive and breeds like wildfire that can melt wax sins away: it is not his fault that Isabella hated living with Thornton because she should have done whatever her lawful husband wanted, it is Hood's fault he killed Marian because he took her away, Vaisey would never have stood by him in time of trouble. So the deal breaks. Claudius applies a gentle potion to the scratch on Guy of Gisborne's hand – like the cut Marian made to hide the slice on the Night Watchman's arm once.

But eventually he breaks these bonds too, the second of three times. An old story that, the rule of three. A very old story, that can keep Guy from backsliding too far in his journey to redemption. Guy escapes his bonds and tries to assassinate Prince John and Isabella, getting his sister thrown into Hell again. Because she was given to Sheridan as his reward for stopping you from stealing the crown – the look on her face could break a heart, because no one deserves Hell. Except in stories. Sheridan spins a story about a man with a firm hand, because his stories are very small but very effective.

And that is the kind of story to use against him. Kate, the Mistress of Small Stories, with more reason for vendettas but made of the same stuff, is just the weapon to aim at Sheridan's breast. You spin him a story of comrades-in-arms which gets you a riddle, but it's Kate's tiny story of a drunken tavern wench who wants to play at wrestling-in-arms with a small but powerful man that gets you the keys and the time to steal the crown. Not quite enough, because her big brother came storming in and told Sheridan to get off her, as protective and unreasonable as ever Matthew would have been.

Although Much is the one who gets ridiculous, ruining the "Which Bag Is It?" game the outlaws play in the forest with Sheridan and his dogs because he has to rescue Kate. Both boys cannot see that, even with his arms around her, Kate is the best to play a very little man like Sheridan. But she couldn't, because of the boys who have decided to love her. Instead, you have to face your old mentor. You beat him, but he carts you off to Hull. Like that would ever work.

Tuck makes a very bad plan to steal the crown back at the coronation, and Kate shows what I initially thought was just how far she'd come from giving up Robin for Matthew. But it wasn't that kind of growth – realizing that bigger stories sometimes come at the cost of little ones – but a new small story. Hers and yours, she imagines. If the other silly boys would stop buzzing around her and getting you captured in the process. Because she would rather she suffers than you, which is not a bad place to start in a tale of love.

So Kate explains that Much has yet to actually see her and deal with the real live woman in front of him rather than impressing whatever his generic perfect woman is onto the pretty face of Will Scarlett's replacement and trying to make her his woman-shaped Robin Substitute and that the place Allen holds in her heart is that of a brother, because he was the one who stepped into that void when Matthew died. But much more succinctly because her stories have always been very small.

The crown returns and John has almost an entire coronation before you show up with shields of blinding light, and Tuck's Stewardship over England grows to include taking the shape of a King. Long enough to provoke Sheridan's very loud and expository repentance and the Strong Saint's power to strike back at Prince Cain, until the light fades and the shape made of wax tries to harden again. The grandest of stories to answer the smallest of stories, just as brief but Epic nonetheless. A story that will live for many ages to come. How Robin Hood shot the crown out of the pretender's hands. Took it away from the false monarch.

Guy of Gisborne attempts to come raging into this fight, grabs the crown as if that will work, and you have to stop him from shooting Prince John. Because you do believe in the monarchy, and you know that Civil War will come if John is deposed. Guy doesn't care about unleashing the power of Hell, but you love your country, as Isabella said. And the bewildered Laertes stuck in a Revenge Tragedy he cannot unravel is still too afraid to kill Claudius, so she dives in front of Caligula and wins the post of Sheriff. Marian's replacement transforms herself into Vaisey's, from Ophelia to Claudius. Her favorite shape ever. Then she breaks the ceasefire and violence erupts out of Hell on the orders of its child bride, all grown up.

And it is the Citizen of Locksley, in the melee of this battle without weapons, that grabs the Crown. Tuck provided her cue, "If God had wanted you to have the crown he would have given it to you," then he kicks it away from John and it is caught by Kate. And she acts silly with it at first, but this is important, Robin. Because someday Prince John _will _become King. But first, you'll spoil the game for him. Never in her old life would Kate Potter of Locksley have grabbed the crown. Before she met you, she would have stared from the sidelines or kicked it to someone more fitting than John. But she never would have taken the law and power of the land into her own hands as she did after a few months with your Merry Men. The people you taught to believe in England have learned, quite without you meaning them to, to believe in an England without a King at all. The England of Robin Hood. This the point of the Battle of the Hearts and Minds of England, given to us halfway through the final game. You were already winning, though you didn't know it, so the game had to change. To melt between your fingers just as you were grasping it.

Because England and Nottingham, and Locksley, are bigger than their representatives. That's the lesson of this story, and it's the key to this new Battle. And it gives you the upper hand that will someday force John's to sign Magna Carta. But it cost us Isabella, and you until Marian stepped in, and it will cost us King Richard. He is lovely, but he is not needed by his country anymore. They need the England of Robin Hood. Richard's Return was a talisman against the Dark, and this new battle has cost us that comfort. Now we have to bring on our own Dawn rather than waiting for it to break. But it will be a brighter dawn than the one you had imagined. Things we do not talk about, but they might have helped later with Leopold.

Until then, we must forge in the darkness a new creation. Something beautiful and terrible and strong: a story. The story of the England of Robin Hood.

It may not seem like much, compared to armies and greek fire and crowns. But a story is a powerful thing. It can do all kinds of things. Sometimes that's all you need.


	39. 39 A Dangerous Deal

**III.9 A Dangerous Deal**

**Stories That Hold Back Hell**

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Everyone is something to someone. And everyone has someone. This story was a crash course in the Hell Isabella survived as the child bride of a monster, but this was also a test of the theory developed around the previous Sheriff of Nottingham. Because if you let go of Isabella, listen to Tuck and Kate with their absolutes, turn away from the ever forgiving Much and understanding Allen, then whose someone can she ever be?

But the real question is this: who did the child bride of Hell reach out to in the long dark night those seventeen years? Who was her someone when she needed someone most? The father she barely knew or the brother who abandoned her? A clue: no. It was the mother who was glorious and strong on the day she stood before the people and explained cheerfully and beautifully that there would be no lord of the manor. There would be a Lady.

That is how Isabella tried to ransom her soul, by clinging to the one person who has remained fixed in her heart. The one precious memory that allowed Ophelia to survive Elsinore, the one thing Thornton could never take from the child bride of Hell. And we don't recognize Gislaine's proud and beautiful and kind and exhilarated stance in her daughter, because we have not met her yet, but that is who shone out of her on the day she pardoned the lovely Meg who tossed her head and said screw it to the entire world because she refused to be sentenced to Isabella's fate – refused to play Ophelia and be sentenced to Hell, took whatever punishment Earth could devise sooner than that. And the child bride of Hell set her free.

Until the Demon she married at thirteen returned. Because Isabella could not take Meg's path, could not let Prince John and the world do whatever they liked to her so long as she was ransomed from Thornton and Hell. Because Gisbornes believe that Hell is a place on Earth. They have lived there all of their lives, since the Flames of Jealousy and Treachery took Gislaine. They don't understand the difference between Earth and Hell. And they alone have no one to love anymore. No one to care if they die.

Until they are both given Meg. Who retells, in the dungeons the Demon Thornton shackled her to, the story of Guy of Gisborne's life – in simple words so he will finally understand. He smiles at her, and he treats her at his lowest with a simple kindness he was always so bad at showing Marian, when he thought the only valuable kindness came from power and money, not brushing the worms out of a piece of rotten bread. And he finally sees what kind of woman Marian was, what she offered to him though she could not ransom his soul in the ways he demanded. Meg lends him the strength, and the perspective from an Earth he has not seen for twenty years, to escape from Hell the third and final time. When Isabella sets her free again, she becomes the first person he allows to save him. And it doesn't work, because no one can save you if you cannot save yourself, not even Marian, but that he let her protect him shows growth. Meg ransomed his soul, told his story and loved him anyway, and she finally blocked a spear with her own body to save him. The angel Guy of Gisborne tried to force Marian to become was waiting, all this time, fending off even crueler suitors, to whisper softly that he can leave now. He is free. You cannot sell your soul to the Devil, it is not a thing that can be bought and sold. For the third time, in payment for the three strikes, Guy of Gisborne leaves Hell behind. He is ready for what is to come.

And Meg, who retold her story so that the men sounded ridiculous and evil, as they were, stood her ground and said with the Earthly Perspective Gisbornes lack that she would rather suffer whatever Earth can throw at her than suffer Hell. And she did, because it wasn't a bluff, but she was an Earthly Angel whom the world tossed low enough, for her defiance, to reach out and touch the Gisbornes who are struggling for light. She went first to Ophelia, before the Demon returned and tried to consume her in fire. She tried to buy Isabella freedom, because she did not know she was in the Realm of Devils.

Who have come to claim their child bride, all grown up. Her name is Isabella, but they demanded that she be Ophelia. They bent her soul over the Flames and melted down whatever she was before they began until she dripped like wax into the steel mold of the child bride of Hell, the abused doll of Elsinore, and when she escaped, she was still burning. She shifted and she changed and she flowed between every man's fingers until she was caught in the ice of Cocytus and had to choose her own shape, because she least of all could remember her original one. And she transfigured herself into Claudius.

If Ophelia were too strong to go mad when her father died, if Laertes could not be bothered to return to Denmark to belatedly protect her, if the men in her life were actively rather than callously cruel, if Ophelia were too strong to go mad and die, if she had a mother to give her a choice besides being a man's silent doll – she would grow up to be Claudius.

There is a danger to both shapes, and it is Hamlet. But not just you, this time. Ophelia was married before, and the other Hamlet is far crueler than ever Shakespeare has written.

A wild man, who killed at the slightest excuse, who robbed a grave and tried to explain to his men that they served a Demon – the torturer of the dead, not one to fear them. And if you had ever seen him circle Isabella, if you had heard his threats of what he would do to her in a small, dark room, you never would have blamed her for killing him. Not you who casually kill guards when it is not necessary, now that Marian is gone. Isabella lost Gislaine long ago. Now we understand the fire that fueled her Proteus-like changes, which made her so careful and so afraid and so desperately furious when the hope she had was yanked away. This man whose mind is a madhouse that offers no asylum. Mirrors and lights and tricks flutter over him every moment, twisting the world into fantastical shapes, telling him this and that – and he demands that his wife have not a thought in her head because he has too many for both of them. It is not misogyny. He hates everyone. Her response is the Dark Side of Feminism, the kind that turns you hard and cold and makes you hate everyone. The kind that Enlightens and Empowers no one.

But in the Face of Hell, there are worse things than a Debilitating Feminism. So Isabella ran into the forest, not caring that the briars stabbed at her, that the Thorns caught her dress, and when she fell into your arms at the end, it was already too late to save her. And she knew it, but she clung fast because she was always so good at gathering protectors for herself. Because even if you were a hope that had fled, you were the first hope, the first ray of light, that she had seen in seventeen years. And you held her, because if nothing else you owed her that for bringing Marian, however briefly, back to touch your heart – for playing that role in your resurrection. Because a frightened, broken woman stood at the Crossroads Alone and while she was waiting there for someone to save her, Hell caught up.

But she knows better than to hope you will love her again, Little John's warning was a reminder, not news. She looked you up and down in the dungeons not so long ago and realized what you are. This man she thought was save her is running so fast the pieces of your heart and soul just keep their alignment even though you had shattered, sheer momentum allowing you to pretend to be whole. Your needs are changing so fast, what you want and needs and fight for runs so wildly about it would take a Proteus to stay with you now. But she has felt the flames of the Crash and Burn when such a legend must finally stop, when such a race to escape time itself fails and Hell catches up at last. She has no desire to run, and God only knows what shapes you'd ask her to be along the way.

But the saddest thing is that Hell did not catch up with her in order to force her back into Ophelia; it came to claim the new Claudius. The Realm of Devils could not quash or take away the beautiful light in the depth of their child bride's heart that was Gislaine the Great all those long years. So even as she hardened herself around a fantastic and Dark shape, they watched for when Gislaine would shine through, and then they defeated her. Took the bright and shining Mother Angel, the Gorgeous Side of Feminism, and crushed it in an instant, knocking the Lady Sheriff flat like she was nothing, turning her Feminism Black. So that Isabella would break and lose the precious light that kept her soul from their clutches for so long. She protected it too well even in the Depths of Hell, so they waited until she let the light out herself, and, at the moment she released it and gloried in it, such that she was dazzling to behold, then they pounced with Thornton and they smothered it at last. Hell won its new Claudius today, whether or not Thornton fell.

So she tosses Meg, who tried to show her that she didn't have to bow to Hell, especially now, into the dungeon with her brother and kills them both. And once you deal with Thornton – as if an Earthly madhouse could hold a man who keeps one that burns with Hellfire in his head – she turns on you. Because you could have saved her, but your heart belonged to another. So did Guy's, the tragedy of Meg as she was a woman, the glory of her as she was an angel sent to save both Gisbornes.

And when Isabella finally feels the heat of Thornton so close she can change again, shift and melt into what will destroy him at last – once she finds that shape, that miraculous shape she searched for for seventeen years – she kills the Demon and becomes once again Mistress of Hell. And I can't help thinking: she loved Gislaine so beautifully, she chose you so often, did Hell have to take its new Claudius today?

If only you'd given her a chance to feel free, to realize as her brother did when he took the Keys that now she can set free like her mother rather than lock away like Claudius, perhaps she would have escaped Hell as well. Perhaps Meg's words, her simple words that sang of freedom, could resonate when Thornton was gone, but you forgot the burn of Flames and the fragile pieces of the burning woman who once stood before you and offered to be anything you liked, so long as you would love her. Be the someone who would care if she died, if she fell into Hell again. And you declared her unfit to rise from the ashes of her Pyre. Which is the worst thing you have ever done, even if she was already mad.

This story could have ended very differently.

But you chose the Small Stories of Kate, who was in another tale entirely. Who could not understand the swirling Parables of Hell, the beautiful Tales of Angels, who brought you back to life in the shifting form of Isabella and who ransomed Guy at last in the form of the wonderful Meg. You chose the cold Epics of Tuck because they kept you from Suicide and the Small Stories of Kate because they were easier once you came back to life. Was it for this, Robin, that Marian touched your heart in the darkest place of Hell? To leave Kate to deal with Much so cruelly rather than talk to him yourself as a man should to his equal, to his best friend? To stand beside Kate Potter in battle rather than Much the Magnificent? As if the Holy Land never happened. To kiss a blonde by the fire because she is clever and kind and beautiful with no other thought in either of your heads?

In a way, in makes sense, because a living heart is even more fragile and at risk – just ask the Gisbornes. You can cover the Great Love Story of Robin Hood, the story to break a Legendary Heart, with the tale of a pretty blonde in the Forest. But I hated watching it, watching you turn away from the endlessly patient love of Much and the understanding, free forgiveness of Allen to the unforgiving Epics and vengeful Small Stories of Tuck and Kate, as you have been doing since the Holy Land – rubbing your resurrection in the loving face of John Little. Whose endorsement of this new love is the only thing that makes me happy to see it, because he may be beginning to understand – he too can be redeemed.

And, examined closely, there is a simple but unmistakable beauty about the romance Kate offers you with this small story destined to be lost in the Grand Legends of Robin Hood and his Merry Men - stories I miss telling, stories I haven't told since the Holy Land. Even when her comments to Much show just how well she understood what it would do to him. Because there is a catch to anyone loving you now: any woman who deserved you would deserve better than to play second fiddle to Marian her entire life. Kate says screw it and tosses her head ten thousand times and refuses to care that she deserves neither. She throws herself on the altar of your happiness knowing about Marian, knowing she can never hold a candle to your wife, your Legendary Partner, the Night Watchman. As Meg knew she could never equal Marian to Guy. Both women offered their hearts, knowing they would receive but a fraction of their lover's in return – because it would save a dark soul entrapped too long and, in a smaller story, brighten the new life of a man who deserves love more than anyone except Little John. The most selfless choice we have yet seen, the best thing Kate will ever do. And we will all hate her for it.

But Isabella, who would not know the touch of an Angel if the light of her shone all around her, who has missed the moment twice when an Angel wrapped herself around her shuddering form, looked into a Mirror and loved the smell of a Demon's blood on her hands. Saw herself there, with no shadow of her mother anymore. And she turned away from the image she held to for seventeen years, became harder and colder than her mother could ever bear to be, and she decided she would keep her own. Because what good was Gislaine's beautiful proclamation if she left her children to suffer Hell all the same?

And your rejection of "the woman Isabella really is" was the worst thing Kate's Small Stories will ever do. It is a small story indeed that damns a magnificent soul to hell because she is the sister of Guy of Gisborne who dared to love you. You spoke of Isabella turning from her better angels as if you hadn't shouted over them while they tried to whisper in her ear. So Isabella turned from the light of Gislaine she had sheltered so long, and she wrapped the Shadows around her, and she loved them – what they protected and what they obscured and what they gave: power that would succeed where Gislaine's failed, power to take what she wanted, and she understood what had intoxicated Thornton for all of these years.

Everyone needs someone. Even Vaisey had Davita. But not Claudius, who was once Ophelia. Not the frozen Proteus, who quenched the fire and tossed her soul to the winds – let Hell come for her someday and do its worst, she would defend this patch of ground upon the Earth. Let Hell come, she holds the Keys.


	40. 310 Bad Blood

**III.10 Bad Blood**

**Very Old Stories**

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'Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs.' Let's talk of a play where a king lost his crown. Let's talk of the one small, unlikely man who can help you out of your grave. And let's pity him for one reason alone: he has no one to do the same for him.

Coming back to life is hard. Redemption is not easy. After you escape from Hell, after you stand in your grave but do not die, you must still live upon the Earth, which often resembles it. Guy of Gisborne was in the forest of shadows and danger, in the dusky wood on the edge of the River Styx. And all he could shout for was revenge, because he was not redeemed yet. And you found him, this man who makes you cry his same refrain, and someone from your past intervened. This is a story of redemption, not revenge. It's uglier, in many ways, because it has to dredge up everything in order to resolve it rather than forcing a brutal period to this curse; we have to deal with the nitty gritty of Gertrude's incestuous sheets instead of simply killing Claudius to avenge the dead. But this story is one of redemption. And as a first step, we must look back. To who you both were once, when this all began. So we can begin to untie all the cords you have both wrapped around your heart and souls, the contortions into which you have forced your lives, and let Guy of Gisborne breathe the free air. Because he finds it hard to understand when he's tied, and he was bound in chains long ago.

I asked, once, what Guy of Gisborne would have been if there were no Robin of Locksley. I should have asked what Guy of Gisborne would have been if there were no Malcolm Locksley. But now he comes with a gift – if he will let him, Malcolm of Locksley can show Guy of Gisborne how to come back. Come back from killing the love of your life for whom you were never the love of hers, come back from killing Marian as he has finally come back from killing Gislaine. Can it make atonement? Do either of them deserve that? Things we do not talk about. It would be cruel to start now.

There are older stories to tell.

There was a love story, once, and there was a war, and it was interrupted. At the end of it all, a beautiful woman died at the hand of one who loved her and thought that gave him a right to insert himself into her love story. And a lot of trouble was gone through, because the widow who was not a widow found consolation while her husband was in the Holy Land. And even as your father told the story I doubt he knew that he was never more to Gislaine than Kate will ever be to you; I wonder if she was ever more to Malcolm than Meg could have been to Guy, but your mother must have been a magnificent woman, Robin, because the father of the Legend in the Heart of England was a small man who had in him only one piece of wisdom and one terrible curse.

To you, he said, "You shouldn't let something terrible to happen because you were too scared to do the right thing." To the Lady of Gisborne, he said, "Then we can be family." So she cut out her heart, and she split open her soul, and she broke a thousand ways to end her love story in order to save her family. Because that is what Gisbornes do.

They sacrifice for those they love. Locksleys try, clumsily or Gracefully, to save everyone. The saddest part of this story was when Guy of Gisborne whispered, "I should have braved the flames." And ever since then, ever since he did not brave the Flames for his family, he has been braving them for everyone else. You tried, clumsily, before you found your Grace.

But before that, Gislaine stood as her daughter would someday stand, proud and gorgeous and strong and gentle. And the forces of evil pounced – through you, the last time they could use this particular young boy to accomplish their Dark ends – and Guy of Gisborne nearly hung as Gislaine the Great fought to Heal a priest you nearly killed, the very man who raised you in Malcolm Locksley's place. But as the Forces of Hell laughed to see your father ready his blade to christen his new family in blood, the love of Gislaine's life, her husband, returned. And everything was beautiful for a moment – or, at least, it was a love story again.

Odysseus returned to find Penelope in the arms of a suitor, but he forgave it. Because _he _was her husband. And he was dying. Gislaine hid him, loved him with her secrets, risked her entire life and bent it out of alignment for her husband, but she also hid something from him. He was glad that she would have a protector for this hard and cold world when he was gone, but they did not wait until that day came. Roger of Gisborne is not the only father of Gislaine's children, although she did not tell him that was why she turned him in as a leper.

And I don't know how Malcom didn't hear, in her cries that day, in her fury when the priest used his language for Roger, an "impediment," and in her assertion that he was her _husband_, that Roger was the love of Gislaine's life. He would never be more than Kate, and imagine how we would all hate Kate if she got rid of Marian herself. But the Gisborne family cut out their hearts and fractured their souls to save themselves from the horrors that the world could unleash – and the banishment was certainly some of its worst. Roger stood in a grave to save his family, Gislaine declared herself a widow and let her heart and love story break to save hers.

But she could not let go. She reached out to her love, who was not dead, this widow who would never be a widow while Roger of Gisborne lived. Guy followed her in the forest, and even though she gave birth to a child of Locksley there, Archer, she was clinging desperately to the old love story. But she had let it break to save her family. Cruelty itself, this story took that as well. Archer was hidden, such that we have not found him until now. In York, surrounded by outlaws where outlaws fear to tread.

And when Guy saw all this but did not understand, he stood in the forest and told his mother that they should stay together and let the winds buffet them together, not care about money or power. And she told him no. We need Malcolm's protection. That is what we do, we cut out our hearts to protect our families. And Guy of Gisborne heard, though he did not understand.

So he went to Roger in a rage and spit at him because he was a boy not yet equipped to see that Roger is the greatest and most honorable man that we have yet met in any of these stories. He and Gislaine, the lady second only to Marian in beauty and spirit and love, are the only ones who have a direct descendant to survive this pair of interrupted love stories. Where is Annie now? Will Archer one day go on a pilgrimage to find her and the baby with his tiny bow and arrows?

Roger returned, and you sounded the alarm, and the house burned. That is what you saw, your father run into the house and never come back. The fire Guy of Gisborne started made orphans of you both. That is what Guy saw, the flames rush ever more through his family, his haven, and condemn him – too weak to save them even if it meant plunging his soul into Hell. Gislaine broke her heart to save her position and did not try to escape the Inferno. That is what Isabella saw, her mother turn from a husband who endangered her.

What no one saw was how two men squared off for her and neither could hear how she could barely pretend to choose Malcolm as much as Roger. And in his rage, at hearing how this was not his love story but always, always that tale of the Lord and Lady Gisborne, Malcolm struck out wildly and killed her – before he even knew what had happened. And Roger stayed with her, to spend his last moments with his wife, and Malcolm ran away and into the Flames of Hell for all these decades. Your parents' love story ended and left nothing but hate in its wake.

Your stories could have been very different.

And, really, that's all very nice and everything, but really, practically, this was the story of how Robin of Locksley learned in seconds more about responsibility and stewardship than his father Malcolm ever knew. How his arrows drove the false bailiff from Gisborne lands and he became their master to ringing applause. And it made him a better man, a better man than ever Malcolm Locksley would have raised. Really this is the story of how Guy of Gisborne was given exile and someone to protect but not the means of doing so and trapped in the fear of that situation arising again, driven from his home, which was given to you. This is the story of how you were given someone to look after and someone to look after you – and how he was given only someone to look after, whom he failed.

And that's all very well, but it doesn't matter now. Because when you awoke again, Gisborne stood and did what Gisbornes do. He put aside his life and his goals and even his Revenge Tragedy to preserve his family – even if that meant cutting out his heart and opening soul as his mother did, even if that meant working with you, the man who is the true husband of the love of his life. And you did what Locksleys do, clumsily and Gracefully save everyone.

To York. Where by saving Archer, you can both save yourselves. The last trite words of Malcolm Locksley, but they hold a small story. It may not be a love story, but it just may be enough – to redeem a soul and save a life. That's how you know that Gislaine and Marian sent him. It's what angels do.


	41. 311 The Enemy of My Enemy

**A/N:** Hello everyone, I'm sorry about the late posting. I'm afraid I was driving (literally) halfway across the United States the past two days, and I'm now at a cafe to get internet access. This problem will probably arise again next week, so I wouldn't expect the second-to-last installment until Monday. For those of you in America, Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for your patience, and I will see you again in a week.

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**III.11 The Enemy of My Enemy**

**The Brother of My Brother**

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There are certain stories that you hear once and that was too much. There are some you hear and love, but do not revisit again or often. There are some stories you look to for comfort or consolation in times of distress. There are some stories you retell at banquets and around campfires in times of joy. Then there are stories that you could hear every day, and they would uplift and empower you each time. The last story was not such a story, nor is this. But it is necessary for the one which is to come, which very well may be. Because in order for that story to happen, many issues must be dealt with here.

Because if you boys pulled your inevitable backslide during the Battle of Nottingham, it would end the game. And your backslide into rage was as predictable as it was understandable. Because Malcolm Locksley was always a self-centered, short-sighted man, and though he really believed that the twenty year old grievances were the root of your feud, the truth is larger than ever Malcolm Locksley could let the world be. You are two very different men who loved the same woman desperately, who had very different views of what makes a man honorable, of what makes love worthwhile, of what constitutes loyalty. So of course you fought in the Forest, despite the tentative accord on behalf of your brother. The brother of my brother is…sometimes still my enemy. Ask anyone with brothers.

It wasn't a great way to introduce the alliance to your gang, but really – what would have been? After Acre? It's harder to watch a man come back to life when you stood and watched him die. You tried to weave your magic, explain to them as you had before when you brought someone new back from a living death: "Guy's one of us now." But he killed Marian, and her we liked. Her we loved. He killed Matthew. He stole Allen and nearly broke him. But he saved Marian a hundred times first, and he arranged a lordship for Allen. We never understood how he loved; we saw only how he killed.

But that's not good enough for this band of legends. He hasn't even offered anything but shared hatred, back to his Revenge Tragedy. Isabella already betrayed them, trusting another Gisborne feels like suicide. Oh, and while we're on the subject: the sister of my brother is…well, my nothing, but it's still a little twisted. A dark punishment for your parents' sins.

Little John took it worst of all. Of course he did. He even tried to leave, as if that would have worked. And if you're still having trouble, after running his arguments through at face value, with reconciling Little John with this man who cannot forgive or bend, then remember this: John Little is a man who has still not been redeemed for his crimes. A man who, for all the good he has done, all the children and families he has shepherded to safety, cannot be forgiven for the crime of abandoning his own. Guy of Gisborne's redemption, his place in a band of honorable men, is repulsively, grotesquely unfair when Little John – the greatest father in Nottingham – cannot be forgiven.

Thank God for Allen-a-Dale, who has been both John Little and Guy of Gisborne in his time. He has lost his family, his hold on life outside of this gang, and he has walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and done terrible deeds for money and power that turned to ashes in his mouth. So he knows: Guy of Gisborne who first put him back in the colors of the Forest and lost him because of that kindness, who stood for him against the Sheriff, who offered him a lordship once, of all people can be redeemed. The first time Djaq pulled Allen back, showed him how she had made the gang her new family to replace her slaughtered twin. So he does the same, follows John and tells him how needed and loved he is. Then he rescues him from Isabella's guards and explains in two gorgeous phrases that also show why, perhaps, we have seen so little of him in these last stories. He has learned, he understands, it's easy to get lost in the stories of those who still have far to go. "That's what we do." We save everyone, as Locksleys do. "Besides, I didn't really have a choice. We're your family." As Gisbornes have always cut out their hearts in order to have.

And it breaks the mighty heart of Little John when he repeats the words back. Because when he says the words aloud that means that John Little is dead, that John Little's real family is never coming back. But Little John cannot afford to grieve any longer. His task has just begun. The final story of your legend will make his place more vital than ever, he cannot hide from it behind Little Little John and dreams of Alice any longer: Little John is the Father of the Forest Family, and they will need their Papa Bear in the times to come. Or Sherwood will fall. And they love him, so he will be all right, but it breaks a mighty heart. As yours did in Acre.

The brother of the brother of my son and redeemer is…someone I can share a camp with. Because if the Little Family even as a dream is no more, then Little John's new family must be as big as possible. When John agrees, so do his children. And they all go to save you from Isabella's trap.

In York your brother broke a smaller heart, several times. Gweneth kept knitting it back together with hope then watching as the conman with magic beans snatched it back again – the Gisborne cruelty in him. And then at times he was a better Locksley than you, insisting to _Robin Hood of all people _that the entire dungeons be set free (honestly, Robin! First the guards now this? That should have been your idea.). He couldn't decide which of his brothers to be, even as they grew closer and closer together. Until he jumped from his ever shrinking range in this story and chose Isabella.

And of course the most dangerous part of the rescue mission was always going to be whether or not you boys would kill each other, especially since Nottingham and your sister arrived so late in the game. So you agreed to trust Guy but he ended up having to trust you, and you put on lord's robes again, and there was a failed escape attempt and there was an attempted execution. It was almost fun, really, after all the dark games you've been playing lately. One last circus act. And I'm sure you didn't notice, how your gang came to rescue you from the noose and Gweneth's men saved your brother, but no one moved to save the life of Guy of Gisborne, who sat on the horse and realized that even after you have been redeemed there is still a cost for having worked for evil men. People do not risk their lives for henchmen the way they do for heroes. But he has found someone at last, because this story is nearly over. It is the least likely person imaginable. The brothe of my brother is…my rescuer.

But in the meantime there was much mirrors and smoke and misdirection as we tried to figure out who your baby brother would be – what traits of Locksley, what traits of Gisborne? What spice of the Orient had seasoned him into something new? And we kept seeing his cruelty paired with his friendship, myteries of the East – terrible weapons – transposed on cheap parlor tricks, and it was not the story toying with us this time. It was that your brother had not chosen himself yet. In the end, Isabella has the most to offer him, as she will always at first appear to do. She, of course, has no idea how furious she should be when she snaps the arrow in half. The brother of my brother shot the arrow that saved my brother, and so did my brother.

His name is Archer, but we shall call him either ORS or H(N)AGAR. ORS for Obvious Robin Substitute or Bear, which he much resembles, or Orsino – who is lovely and poetical but _just doesn't get it _until the very end. Or we shall call him H(n)agar for He's (Nearly) As Good As Robin for his skill at the bow and because he is like to Hagar, who bore the unwanted son who received a splintered inheritance in the very land to which Archer travelled to learn of their weapons. I will call him according to the votes of the readers of this tale, because I cannot pick which best describes this man, because you never knew your brother as you deserved and this is your story, Robin. But we who must go on, we need to know how to call this man, who will be asked to take up the torch of being Robin Hood's baby brother, perhaps even taking up your leafy mantle should Tuck and England call. And in his way, your replacement is your opposite as well.

And perhaps it was this that made Kate so worried, so fearful that you would not come back to her safely. Or maybe she knew that this pretty little tale she fashioned for you was about to break. Your story is ready to grow, Robin, and it is ready to wax to its height. And then it will wane, but we will not talk about that. This is not a blessed time, like last time, but it is the Glorious Time. The Age of Heroes and the Time of Miracles, at their most beautiful…

And the words you've waited since Acre to hear: you will see Marian soon…


	42. 312 Something Worth Fighting For, Part 1

**A/N:** So I just made it on Sunday after all. I can't believe this is the second to last installment. There will be an epilogue immediately following on Monday after next Sunday's rendition on the finale.

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**III.12 Something Worth Fighting For**

**There Is A Price**

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You heard the approaching hoofbeats, but you did not know what they really meant. Who would have? We all heard the hoofbeats, but we want hope. We want challenges about shooting three arrows at once and Guy of Gisborne joining the flow of the gang like he was always meant to be there. But there is a price for one last beautiful, simple moment, and it is that we do not see the end coming. Would it have changed anything?

And so we learned that the King was coming home, and that Prince John was on the move. They took the men of Clun, the men of Nettlestone, and you barely arrived in time to save Locksley. What we did not hear was Tuck's prophecy: you spoke in the Forest and then he finished the letter with, "England will soon be yours." How could we? We didn't even understand when we heard the hoofbeats. There is a price for the England of Robin Hood, and it is King Richard's Return. Would you have chosen if you'd know that?

There is a price for your rescue of the men. Locksley died today. But that was not your fault. It was about to go to Hell, and Meg taught us: what Earth can do to you is easy in comparison to what Hell can.

There is a price for all of the redemptions that Isabella's Fall counterbalanced, especially her brother but your new life as well, and it is this: she knows how to defeat you. The Mistress of Hell rages into the night once more, burning down everything in her path rather than cloaking everything in darkness. The more your stars burn, the more she blazes below. She knows how to turn people away from you. To take things that shouldn't work but do. Because there is a price for everything, and she has paid many Faustian debts in her time. She knows how to use the prices we can never stop paying to destroy things that are good and beautiful, or were once. Because anything truly beautiful was dark once, or nearly was.

And Archer came to her, offering weapons poorly, because there is a price to stripping Gislaine away from Isabella. And it is that Archer's comment that Robin Hood is a maniac, "who just has to go around saving people," is the worse possible thing he could have said to his long lost sister – except the inevitable fact of her mother angel's adultery. Because she's the one person you didn't save, or at least the person you refused to save most cruelly. Who is this Archer to be worth your time to rescue? You condemned her to Hell with barely a blink and a soulful look. The worst thing you ever did. There is a price to your resurrection, to your inevitable rejection. Isabella tells your brother and hers the simple equation she once worked from, "what I need are men that can offer me loyalty and protection," then spit at him the way you spit at her, "Arrest him!" Because she does not believe that there are any men like that out there. The best man in England wasn't one. Who is this Archer to think she will trust him to be because he knows of the shames that have haunted her family since before Hell's onslaught, when the world threw everything it could at the Gisbornes? Since the day they all forgot that there was a difference between the Earth and Hell.

Tuck came to you in the Forest as you ran about trying to fix your homeland for your King and said that you had to change it instead. You're not shepherding the men until their divinely appointed representative returns to lead the flock. You're supposed to teach them to stand up and fight. There is a price to your protection, and it is that the men can never rise on their own. You didn't like it, really, but Tuck was right. As Djaq would have been. Hope is more precious than a stalwart guardian. That is the price of being protected, not being able to save yourself. That is your great gift to others, helping them to save themselves, and yet you hide the light under a bushel for a king who left his country to the long dark night.

Isabella knows that everything has a price because so often she has paid a man's Faustian Debt. As Vaisey wielded so well all the things we do not talk about, she aims the prices that we can never fully pay at the hearts of your gang. She offers Rebecca the safety and simple life, which was all that she had ever wanted, at the price of breaking her daughter's heart by convincing her that you were in love with the Sheriff of Nottingham. With a warning of the truth: Hell is coming. And she declared a general pardon for Allen-a-Dale. Because Hell still has the Faustian pact he signed once, even if he has voided the terms of the deal.

There is a price to Esau's flight from her family, and there is a price for the pretty little tale Kate tried to use to cover the great love story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. And, of course, it's all patently ridiculous – the way the sin that lost Guy Marian at the altar was ridiculous after everything they had endured – that a woman who must have known about Lady Marian would ever think that _Isabella_ is her competition here. Ophelia can be forgiven her mistake, she never knew the Night Watchman and heaven knows neither of the boys would talk to her about Marian properly. Things that shouldn't work but do, because there are some things for which we never stop paying the price. And – like with Guy's fatal sin – it also makes perfect sense, because in a way this is the worst thing you could do to Kate Potter who contented herself with playing second fiddle to a dead wife because she loved so much the way your face relaxed into a real smile, because she loved the way you looked at her and stared right into her soul (the way you do with everyone, yes, she could live with that). It still means everything to Esau, especially with Rebecca playing her tricks. Kate contented herself with that, because Marian was dead and you deserved to be as happy as she could make you if you had to stay on the earth. Now to throw a living rival in her face is cruelty itself. It wipes away the good she thought she could do you, a labor of love all the more beautiful because she knew it could never be fully requited. If she had wanted someone to adore her she would have chosen Much and if she wanted an equal who would make her happy she would have chosen Allen, as I would have in her shoes. But she chose instead to love you, because if anyone deserves something beautiful in their hard life it is you, knowing that you would never love her the same way – although you might love her well enough. To say that even that is not true, that all this time you wanted someone else entirely, breaks every piece of her heart.

She doesn't manage to put them back together, which is why she runs to get help during the Siege. There was too much truth in the lie that you could never really belong to her, although it was not about Isabella, and the feeling of despair that washed over her felt too inevitable. Even Rebecca cannot put Esau's heart back together with her repentant truth.

I don't know if someone told Isabella the story of Allen's journey through Hell or if it's just that she, as a former shape-shifter, knows by sight a man who has worn two faces in his life. But she chooses just right when she hatches her other evil plot.

There is a price for treachery. And it is never fully paid in this life. It is suspicion. Because who is Allen-a-Dale to be trusted over someone who has never betrayed the gang? For that matter, who was the traitor to be the one to save them at Death's Barndoor? Who is Allen-a-Dale to be immune from the inevitable backslide? Only the most beautifully redeemed character in this story, save perhaps Guy of Gisborne. Only the one who holds the gang together because Will Scarlett's replacement and Djaq's are not up to the task. Only the man who brought Little John back to real life at last. But there is a price for treachery, and it is never fully repaid in this life. Because the last words of Isabella's proclamation are completely true, "He is a free man," but that was never hers to declare. It was his to earn and Marian's to give. But there is a price for treachery, and it is that the forces of Hell can turn even your redemption against you.

There is a price for holding the Keys of Hell. It cannot destroy you anymore, but it dashes the pure light that once filled your soul. Instead of shining with her mother's light, the daughter of Gislaine can only declare that she will kill a thousand men to keep her saintly mother's name pure. Because that's all she has clung to in the dark, and the light went out at last, so the memory of it must remain unchanged. But Isabella cracked her mother's precious locket to take Kate from you, tossed it off like so much garbage. Because Hell finally stamped out the beautiful light of Gislaine, because her daughter paid too many men's Faustian Debts. More than anything else in this story so far, Guy of Gisborne's recognition of his mother's locket broke my heart. There is a price to power fueled by treachery, and it is everything that was once precious to us.

There is also a reward for trusting in a man's redemption, and it is that your wild and gorgeous scheme to take the castle is made possible by Guy of Gisborne's knowledge of the many ways in and out of Hell. Unfortunately, Archer found the price of such information as well. This tunnel came at the price of many diggers' lives and Vaisey's escape.

There is a price for the murder of Matthew Potter, and it is Kate's constant shouting down of Gisborne's redemption. Because she has small stories, as if the only reason to be a part of the Siege of Nottingham was the fact that you "needed" her more than Rebecca did, which could never be true. Redemption is always a huge story, and there is a price for Kate keeping them so small. She was happier when Guy spoke like he did before he was redeemed. She preferred demons to converts. And as terrible as it was, even Little John reacted with fury to the redemption of the murderer of Marian. And another price is how easily an obvious setup fooled her, incidentally.

Archer used the tunnel before you could, because there is a price for the loneliness of his whole life, to be taught the lessons of neither Gisborne or Locksley. To have no one to look after or to look after him. Even Vaisey had Davita, even Guy and Isabella had each other once. A truth to break any heart.

Like when Little John turned on Allen-a-Dale again, the very man who finally brought him back to a new life so painfully in the last story. The look on Allen's face when he begged them to believe him, turning to Guy of Gisborne to vouch for him in a fantastic repayment of the cost of turning down that damn lordship so long ago, would break any heart. Because who is he to change his spots? Besides the man who showed them all how? Things that shouldn't work but do, because there are some sins for which we never stop paying. "None of you, none of you believe me." They tie poor Allen up in the camp, spit at his redemption, but Allen-a-Dale knows that that can be taken by no one. Marian inched him back over the line, and when Vaisey brought her low enough she took his hand to pull him out, but he found his way back from Hell. No Fallen Saint can proclaim him damned, no proclamation can make him a traitor. No disbelief in the eyes of those he loves can keep him from their side in the battle to come.

There is a price to the size of Tuck's stories, and it is that when he starts with the story he cannot fit ordinary men around it. He is the opposite of Djaq. She could rally these people, but he does not love them as people the way Little John does, he sees them only as Englishmen who must rise, who must fight, who will live in glory in song even if they die. But the men of Locksley are like Kate and Matthew before her, they want to live simple lives. They are like John Little, but Little John stirs in their hearts. Because the price was his family, the life he once loved, but he rose to something better.

While we're on the subject, there is a price for messing with a man's grave. Much is right. You've done much of that in the past, pulling men out alive again. But the price is the risk that you will end up trapped in the coffin. To die a slow, painful death.

And there is a price to Rebecca's betrayal. It is her daughter. A truth to break a heart that had room for nothing but small stories.

Allen-a-Dale was the only man in Nottingham free to see the truth, once he broke the bonds of shattered friendship in the camp. He was always going to be the first to see the retaliation of Hell, because he was the first man who escaped its clutches.

As Little John and Brother Tuck stood alone on the bridge before the Gates of Hell, the Father of Nottingham found a bridge to show the familyless monk the way to finally see people, not their stories. To see people as more than the sum of the tales you can tell about them. Their inherent dignity, not lent by any symbol, in the quiet before the plot began. The price is an idea far ahead of its time and several lives of the villagers who come, touched by the transformation of a man they once knew into something far greater. But there is a reward for such a breakthrough, for sharing a piece of your soul with the person most likely to abuse the privilege because Brother Tuck needs the Father of Sherwood as much as any of the gang.

And peaceful protest is precisely the point at which Tuck's Grand Epics and Kate's Small Stories intersect, which is gorgeous storytelling. Because Tuck's plan is the stuff of legend, a story of how an army was defeated by ordinary men without drawing a weapon, but it required this new understanding of the precious dignity of human life quite outside of any story, provided by the redeemed at last Little John, thanks to Allen-a-Dale. And Kate's return helps so much because she knows to go right up to an individual guard and demand of him: is the story of your life to be how you mowed down a pretty girl? How you struck the first blow in this massacre in which only one side had weapons? I didn't think so. No one wants to pay the price of that story. Even Archer, who was just told that he was scum by Isabella Thornton.

But this is a story of such prices. Prices like that Much and even Guy of Gisborne willingly paid for you, because they knew that you were the flame that kept England burning. So they lifted you up on their shoulders to give you a chance to survive longer. The price, for you, is watching them die when you cannot help. The price for everything you've ever done to Much is that he cannot hear the grief in your voice when his hand falls from your grip.

And your baby brother was lifted up unknowingly on the shoulders of the men of Nottingham who stood perfectly still as soldiers drew swords and Isabella fired. Kate stood with her sword outstretched, and I wonder if he fell a bit in love with her or if, when Isabella handed him the money to escape, he realized he had no where he wanted to go. If in the disgust in her eyes he saw what he was: a man going into Hell for a lark. Like Vaisey. Even Guy and Isabella condemned themselves for love. No one wants that to be the story of their lives. Nowhere else had something so beautiful to offer him as these men of Locksley. And the reward for this realization and resurrection is that he can save you, and even Much and Guy.

One word of Isabella's showdown with Kate – the price of using family against each other when she of all people should know better. Of all the long list of reasons why you and Kate should not be playing happy couple, the fact that you're a noble and she isn't is decidedly not on the list. Sometimes Isabella entirely misses the point. But what should top it is this: when Kate tried to say words of love to you as you came back from death, all you realized was that Allen was innocent.

Not only that, but he knew the truth.

And his smile was radiant, running back to you, running from Vaisey, like he always felt most right doing. More than a petty conman at last – that's what it meant to be conned. You weren't the one playing false. Then he fell, as they struck him down again and again, because there is a price for bravery too. There is a price for loyalty. There is a price for heroism. It is the stuff of ministrel's songs, his death, perhaps that's where Robin Hood lore got it wrong about Allen-a-Dale, who could not carry a tune until today – when he could carry an opera.

But there was one final price he had to pay for treachery: when he pulled himself up, as he lay about to die, it was into the face of the Devil that he looked. And he must have thought that he was bound for Hell after all.

But if God is kind, as I have always believed He is, then that is not what met the eyes of Allen-a-Dale a moment later. Don't be jealous, Robin, that he saw Marian first. Vaisey finally spurred Allen-a-Dale to fly high enough that she could reach down to take his hand.

The conman bean counter – who never claimed to be more – finally found his place in the Age of Heroes.

And you accepted yours. "This Castle and everything in it [and everything it stands for and everything it could be] belongs to the People!" Not King Richard. This is not for some absent king who can be kidnapped and ransomed. Who can be killed in the Wars, who can die because a peasant with a frying pan distracted him long enough that another could shoot him from behind. This is for the England of Robin Hood.

It is glorious, so the price will be steep. Especially because Vaisey is back. Allen-a-Dale was only the beginning.


	43. 313 Something Worth Fighting For, Part 2

**A/N:** So, this is the end. It's been a great journey, and I thank everyone who's taken it with me, especially those who dropped me a note along the way, although I wonder where you've been the past two weeks. Thanks especially to htbooker and Lady Kate for their regular reviews. You'll forgive me for letting this be as long as it wanted, it's a hard story to say goodbye to. My final word on the subject will be posted tomorrow. On to the finale.

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**III.13 Something Worth Fighting For, Part II**

**Something Worth Dying For**

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Because you're right. They _are_ the Soul of England. And this is not a Battle for her soul, this is not, as it was before we lost Marian, a battle for which way her soul will tilt. This is the battle _of_ the Soul of England. And if they win, that soul will be crushed. The Body Politik may survive years or even centuries longer, but this is her soul on the line. Something worth fighting for indeed.

And I know this happened in the first half of this final tale, but I must recall how Vaisey grinned, "Oh, this is going to be so much fun." I didn't know how much I missed him until he said that. The Merry Devil of Nottingham, it's so easy to forget that he's going through just as much shit as Isabella. "Welcome to Hell, Robin Hood." He has never sounded more joyful than this. He points to his heart although that is not where Gisborne stabbed him. I have no heart, his gesture says. He did once, but Guy of Gisborne of all people broke it, when he killed the man who tried to be his father. There is always a reckoning for such things.

He lied about Allen when giving you his demands, but it does not matter if no one knows to sing minstrel's songs of the death of Allen-a-Dale. No one can take away your ascension by not acknowledging it. But his body was broken in the process, there is no doubt of that. A man who grew great enough to be a Legend Deep in the Heart of England now measures two meters on the ground. There is a reckoning for heroism.

Much has never been more broken than this. Because you never got to apologize, never got to love him again, this man who was twice cut out of the company of the best men in England. This man who deserved that company more than anyone, in the end; a loyal friend. Not only to you, to Guy of Gisborne too, who needs love more than anyone. Little John's heart is shattering in his chest. The newborn Father of Sherwood has failed another son. He has until dawn before he must risk them all.

Even Guy of Gisborne is with you today. Because this is bigger than Vaisey and Robin Hood. This is bigger than Nottingham. This is the Soul of England, who has until dawn before Byzantine fire wrecks havoc on its new capital. The weapons of your baby brother, because there is a reckoning for selling your soul and your secrets to the highest bidder, Archer.

There is a reckoning for the sale of a sister to a monster. Guy of Gisborne gave poison to Claudius, and she was beat down but no longer broken. Until he told her why he gave her a suicide capsule (a drop could kill, a gulp could end it quickly, just like hatred can kill quickly or slowly) was because of the small light of Gislaine that was still hidden somewhere in their hearts. Because he didn't know that it was crushed out of her, that it was the worst thing he could have said. There will be a reckoning for this.

Little John's daughter knows the Time of Reckoning draws near. She heard, at last, when you spoke only of Allen as you returned to life and her. The despair was too inevitable, there was too much truth to Isabella's lie that you would never be hers. Perhaps she saw: you had been expecting Marian's face, on the other side of death. So she scurries down and away, going for King Richard's army to join the Battle of the Soul of England. She said goodbye only to her father, not her ersatz lover. Perhaps she left so easily because Matthew's replacement, though his opposite in many ways, is now gone too. Everywhere she goes her family is shattering. She kisses her father goodbye, because it was never for England that she fought but Locksley and you, and look where that got her. King Richard seems easier now.

Your brother did not need you to tell him the ironies of the reckoning of dying under his own Byzantine fire. You were not in a position to see his redemption, it went by so quickly and only Kate had a good view of it. Your family was too precious and too large already – too many would die because they listened to Robin Hood already. The Soul of England must take a stand or all is lost. But there will be a reckoning for this.

The man who stopped your Great Suicide attempt and the man who caused it went over the wall with you, along with the man you saved first of all in your story but who did not reach redemption until just days ago, because we have come so far since Acre, since Will Scarlett and Allen-a-Dale's first execution. Everything that rises eventually converges. But not Much, who always stood by your side faithfully. Who always waited for your favor, for your orders, for your words of command and love. But now he must, because he is the only other Crusader here. If you do not return, he must lead the battle of the Soul of England. And you are the best man in England, but Much is the most wonderful. You did well in your choice, this man who will be remembered in Robin Hood lore but never for this: how he was your chosen replacement, which makes sense in its way – he is your opposite in every way but those that matter most.

The part we did not see is when your more permanent replacement explained how to disable the weapons he built for the Merry Devil of Nottingham in seconds. Things we did not have time for, because Vaisey was always going to strike during the Long Dark Night. You must earn the Dawn.

And what else must Archer do to earn his redemption? Is rescuing you from an army single-handedly enough? If not, he brought Hell's weapons back to you. His offering to Tuck, to make a legend of how Hell's Flames consumed the Forces of Evil, and they died in their own Byzantine fire. Fires that blaze around Vaisey, because for him too there will be a reckoning.

And let me say of Much: at last. To the man who has no family but you, for he is no milliner's son, "Now you know!" At long last, he knows. That the one person you always trust to have your back is him. Your brother-in-arms. You have many brothers now, but Much is still the best by far. Now you know. Now he knows. Now he has heard it at last.

In the meantime, Gisborne who has stared at the Gates of Hell longer than any other man, with longing and with fear, who turned back to face Dis again and again because of love, knows that they will not hold for long. The town of Nottingham is lost. The Castle is stronger. And men who hold bows not as magnificent as yours stand with the most wonderful man in England, holding back Hell as long as possible. To give the miraculous Grace of Robin Hood the chance to stop it for good. That is all that Much has ever been doing – holding back Hell for you. The Hell that had invaded your soul in the Holy Land, the Hell that threatened your life in England, the Hell beating down the gates to kill to the Soul of England. His England was always smaller, he told us long ago, but he stands and fights for it like any other man in Nottingham. Because his heart is bigger than any man in Nottingham, especially now that you filled it with the words of brotherhood at last.

Tuck and Little John follow his direction in leading a formal battle. The men of Nottingham and Locksley trust him. The ordinary peasant who fought in the Crusades, who defended the King daily for years, who became the equal of a man like Robin Hood. Things we forget, but no one can take away Much's ascension, the ascension he had before this story even began, by not acknowledging it.

Men were always easy for Claudius. Everyone but Hamlet. Isabella escaped the dungeons. Because there is a reckoning for your betrayal of her, and her brother's.

Kate returned with a reckoning. The price for the England of Robin Hood is the easy salvation that comes from King Richard's Return. It was a talisman against the Night, someday the Lionhearted will return and set things right. But a king is a funny thing, that can slip between your fingers like wax. In the end, it is a thing that inhabits a simple man who can be captured by Leopold of Austria and held for ransom. The England of Robin Hood must earn its Dawn, it cannot simply wait out the Long Night now. There is a price for your new Soul of England – it must fight its own battles.

You and Vaisey outlined the terms for each other, like you did at the beginning of the game. This was not for the lives of individual men and a pretty blonde. He would not kill the villagers, because they make better slaves than corpses. This was not for lives, it was for the Soul of England – Vaisey didn't want to see it obliterated. He wanted to see its back broken and crushed under his heel. He was tired of the game, your little tricks, the spark in your eye and the straightness of your back. He was sick and tired of watching as man after man stood up, their backs as straight as yours even as their faces showed their terror. He was sick of the game, the little tricks to save the girl. This was a battle of the Soul.

So Much, with whom you never needed more than four words on a battlefield, saved Kate. And the battle began. You won at first, so Vaisey went to the Tunnel. For a private reckoning.

Your hungry arms enclosed Kate, and the hope that this gave her only made the end crueler later. Because there is a reckoning for her small love story, like a bandaid on an arrow through the heart.

Solving for Nottingham has its disadvantages. You can't always win Nottingham. Locksley is dead, and its men are dead and dying now. So you must, instead, fight for England. Is that not something worth fighting for? A great nation, built by the people, where the men of Nottingham are the Soul of England. Is that not something worth dying for? Ask yourselves. A question you've answered many ways. But this is the only story that we'll hear in Robin Hood lore – in the hearts of those who love freedom, in the hearts of those who despise tyranny – how in Nottingham one day, the men of Locksley stood for England. The Soul of England stood and fought. That is all the matters, in the end.

But if that were enough, this story would have taken far less time. There is too much, in reality. That is the story we came here for, but the truth is not so simple. There is too much of it. There will never be enough of it. This is the last part of the tale that matters in the course of history, in the fight over England and its Soul. Because something gorgeous was just born, in your words and in their cheers, something far harder to kill even than you, even than Robin Hood. The part of this story that matters is over, because there has been the Birth of a New Nation. Now we are simply seeing to those we have come to love in the telling, in a way that keeps Herod from slaughtering the newborn.

Perhaps that's why it shrinks. From barrels of Byzantine fire Tuck makes, from the Battlements to the Courtyard to the Great Hall of Hell itself. Men of Locksley dying for every inch, the Soul of England measured in their bodies – two meters upon the ground at a time.

And, to those we have loved most, the Tunnel. Isabella summoned her brother to his reckoning, a call he of all people could never have denied. Because Claudius could always play Laertes like a fiddle. A story that's been played a thousand times. A story Archer would never understand. In Hell's assault, he saw a way out for everyone. He was always good at finding ways out of Castles. That's why he has earned this: being part of the reckoning that clears the way for the victory of the Soul of England.

But the reckoning must come first. It must clear the path of all the things we don't talk about, all the sins for which we can never stop paying, all the deaths and battles we did not fight so that the game could continue. All the choices you made every day, of which you were afraid to speak. Now is the Time of Reckoning.

And while you go to do that, I will linger a moment with Brother Tuck and Kate Potter, who for once are saying precisely what Djaq and Will Scarlett would have said in their places – although Djaq would have laughed first to hear it was still attributed to the Greeks rather than her own people – Brother Tuck, who has learned to love the men in his stories as much as the tales themselves, speaks of his plan which would kill every man woman and child in Nottingham as Kate speaks of how it will break the Sheriff's power forever, what we've all been fighting for. And I don't just mean Vaisey when I say the Sheriff. I have missed the Scarletts and the wisdom of Safia, more each time I looked at their replacements. But they finally rose to the occasion, they could finally hold a candle to those who stayed to fight the Battle of the Holy Land.

And the great secret: all of this nonsense in the Tunnel is the same sacrifice, the same lie, that Marian made in Acre for the Old Order. She lied, tricked Sir Guy with her whole life into killing her rather than Richard in the crucial moment. You and Sir Guy have played Vaisey and Isabella with your whole lives, with every betrayal and Long and Short Game, with every smirk as you gloated in victory, so that they will forget that though this is a Time of Reckoning, it is also a Time of Rebirth. So that they will be so focused on killing you and the brother of your brother that they will miss the birth of something new and even more important. To forget that revenge doesn't matter the way that kingdoms and souls and the England of Robin Hood does. The Reckoning is real, as was Marian's death, but it is also a fabulous bluff, a beautiful sacrifice, so that the Forces of Hell will forget what they came here to do.

Guy is the first to face Reckoning, because he was first to dive into Hell. He went for love, and he stayed for love, and when all of his loves were ended he finally escaped. And he found that love existed beyond Hell as well, that it flourished there more than ever. But he did not renew the loves he lost to escape. Isabella and Vaisey, the two Sheriffs of Nottingham he has hated and offered to kill, stand and remind him: "You loved me once." Sins for which he would never stop paying. Now is the time of reckoning.

Everything else that this trio has to say we've heard before, but it must be said. The one thing that mattered is the thing we do not talk about. Finally said. "You loved me once." Said three times.

The brother of his brother and his brother both returned, stopped their sister from stabbing her betrayer in the back. A family affair: your brother, his sister, her brother, his father. This whole battle coming down to a family fight. Only Vaisey and Isabella were amused. Because they thought they'd won, by fighting the battle at all. They always thought the Time of Reckoning would work to their advantage. After all, they have already paid their Debts.

But this is the obstacle that must be removed – everything your family has done to each other. Then we can at last escape this game. Then we can see a way out. If you cannot solve for Nottingham, then Archer _can _solve for brothers-in-arms. Your death and Guy of Gisborne's are the sacrifice that shields Archer's rebirth and the rise of the Soul of England. He who never had family, when even Vaisey had Davita and Guy and Isabella loved each other once. If Archer were not here, you and Guy would have fallen. Because you resurrected by forcing Isabella down, because Guy freed himself by killing Vaisey. This is the Time of Reckoning, but there is a new man – whose redemption is still soaring. There is a man blazing with new life to carry on when the Time of Reckoning takes a life for a life, as justice demands. The Sheriffs of Nottingham did not count on your brother-in-arms. Vaisey thought he killed that with Allen-a-Dale – with Tom-a-Dale ages ago. But there are things not even Hell can burn.

If there were no Archer, if a small man of Locksley had not loved a great woman of Gisborne many years ago, if they had not broken lives and families to create this man now blazing with the light of redemption, then Guy of Gisborne would never have pushed you away, knocking you away from Isabella's treachery with no more than a scratch. Then Vaisey kills him, for betraying his Dark Father, and Isabella stabs him in the back for condemning her to Hell. This was always going to happen, redemption does not stop the Time of Reckoning.

There were three strikes, shared between you brothers-in-arms at last. Archer survived. Because it is not finished. Not this time.

Even if Claudius took the poison of Laertes and put it onto her blade. Even if you will die slowly from this scratch, as somewhere in Denmark Hamlet is dying from Claudius and Laertes's treachery. Because you abandoned Isabella in Hell, this woman broken beyond repair, this child bride of Hell whom you did not save. Because for all you once did to Guy of Gisborne, in the Time of Reckoning he must be part of your punishment as well. Even for the man who possesses the extraordinary Grace of Robin Hood, there is always a Reckoning.

Three men, three brothers, three heroes stood alone in the dungeon after the Time of Reckoning, when justice was done for those who were killed and damned because of Locksley and Gisborne. There would be only one survivor by the day's end, and they all knew it. Guy of Gisborne was redeemed before he was punished, so he told Archer how to save the people of Nottingham, for the brother who lay dying for crimes for which he can never stop paying. The man who made you and Guy brothers left to make you fathers of a new nation – a nation built on the blood of Locksley and Gisborne both. A nation born, like the man himself, in the Forests of Sherwood.

And when you were alone you spoke of your mutual love again, as you two boys could never talk about Marian before now. Guy smiled, finally understanding, "At least you have someone waiting for you." There is a price for betrayal. There is a price for murder. And it can never be fully paid in this life. The last price Guy of Gisborne must pay is not believing that the next thing he sees will be her face. "The love of my life, but she was always yours." There is a price for redemption. There is a price for bravery. There is a price for heroism. "I lived in shame but because of you, I die proud." The gift he was always trying to take from Marian, was always in your hands to give. It will never be remembered, his redemption is not a story that will be told in Robin Hood lore, because there is a price for murder and treachery and working for Devils.

But if God is kind, as I have always believed he was, the reward for redemption was the angel who greeted him on the other side of death. The woman who always wanted to see him redeemed but did not have the power to grant it him. Because she was always yours. Because the chance to save Guy of Gisborne always belonged to you. Funny old world. If Malcolm had never loved Gislaine, many things would not have happened, but the most heartbreaking one would be this: Marian and Gislaine could not have sent Archer to you boys – so that you could at last save Guy of Gisborne. It was always you who had that power. And you granted it at last.

You could have saved Isabella once too. You still have to pay the price for that. A story Tuck would not understand, so he is the one you tell.

The Family Affair cleared the main blockage, but the Father of Sherwood was needed to clear the smaller one. Little John will shepherd these people when you have fallen at last to the Time of Reckoning, led by the light of Archer as he blazes with redemption, in stories told by Tuck until the end of the world.

There is a Time of Reckoning for all the evil done by the Sheriffs of Nottingham as well. Byzantine fire blows the Castle for which they both killed so often sky high. Because a house built on the foundations of Hell will always end in a Blaze. Because Lucifer is always lying, even to his Merry Devils and Child Brides, even to his Gatekeeper and Claudius.

You took your brother and shot one last flaming arrow into Hell. And then it was over. Hell's great Castle burned and collapsed and fell back into the Pit, taking its Master and Mistress with it.

Your brother asked if you could lift your bow. "Of course I can. I am Robin Hood." Damn straight. For a moment, even Vaisey smiled.

Little John's family was jubilant. His daughter leapt into his arms and everyone threw their arms around each other, and he took them all into his embrace. The biggest family ever in Nottingham. The Father of Sherwood held them all, their joy almost too much to take after so long in exile from the love that only a family can give. The heart that has been broken so many times finally healed.

Just in time to watch his son, the best man in England, the man who brought him back to life, die. Just in time to have to hold up the most wonderful man in England in his inconsolable grief. Just in time to hold his daughter as her family shatters yet again. He turns to his brother for strength, just for a moment, then he holds the Family of Sherwood steady through their grief in his gigantic arms.

The first time you came home, we saw a hand brush aside a tall blade of grass. Now we see another. And we can imagine the two hands meeting once again, just the softest touch. Your smile only confirmed it.

You hugged your best friend to comfort him, loving the only man in the world who was a better man than you. You hugged your father for comfort, on a good day to die, and borrowed his strength. You fell into your brother's arms and gave him the only thing he ever needed to be a great man, a legend: a family, a place to belong. Someone to love. You thanked your savior, and you finally purged the humanity he was always stripping from you, gave him the Legend England needed. You touched Kate's face softly, looking directly into Esau's soul one last time, and you reminded her she was brave, the way you once reminded her she was still alive.

And then you walk away from them, because unlike Marian you could never do a public death scene, because if a great legend falls in a forest and no one sees it perhaps Tuck can make England believe it never happened, because it would be cruelty itself to make Kate and Much watch this next part.

So it is only the trees of Sherwood that witness the final reunion of Robin and Marian, as they alone have seen a hundred rendezvous before now which were always far too brief. And though all we would see is your hand reaching out for someone unseen, then falling as your life fell from your body, the Trees of Sherwood know. That that is when she touched your hand at last, and the moon that eclipsed your love had finally passed. The Trees of Sherwood saw her laugh as you swung her around and welcomed you to your eternal playground under their shade, which could barely eclipse the glorious light of the newly returned sun. And by God, how I've missed her. How I will miss you.

Goodbye, Robin Hood. She's right you know, the greatest adventure is yet to come. I hope she greeted all of her men today, but the most important meeting was always yours.

I just thought you should know, before you go, what it was you were fighting for.

Tuck's Legends eulogized you, and Kate's small stories found a reason to carry on. For a moment, the world looked bleak with only those two things left in them. But then the Father of Sherwood remembered, and he spoke the words to knit his family back together, to take them all in between his large, strong hands. We Are Robin Hood. And the Sherwood family carried on.

Nottingham still exists, but it is not as it was then, never again. It is an ordinary city now, and the sheriff sees to clerical duties. It is a place like Nettlestone, not a Hellish rival of London. That conduit of Evil into England has disappeared forever. It never rose from those ashes.

King Richard was ransomed by the mother you saved instead of protecting Marian, long ago. Prince John, most likely by the work of your men, was not able to raise sufficient funds to counterbribe his captor. Even so, the Prince nearly seized the throne before your precious Lionheart returned. Richard forgave his brother and named him as his heir to unite the country.

Then Richard of England and Phillip of France picked a fight. Into the fray he took many of your Merry Men. And a peasant man so amused the King by brandishing a frying pan as a shield in one hand and a bow in the other that he was one of the few to see the arrow that struck the King's arm. The wound became infected and your Lionheart died, pardoning the boy who struck him from behind. Everything has a price, and King Richard did leave his kingdom to the ravages of his nobles; even a King must pay the price of betrayal as Allen paid today before your eyes. Everything is a choice, Robin, and no man is exempt from that.

But it was not for nothing that you held England against John all those years. In 1215, the people of London opened their gates to forces that would remove the tyrant John. But they did not simply change one master for another now. John repented what he did on June 15th, and, eventually, with his son, it was weakened. Because nothing is as simple as one of Tuck's stories would make it. But the parts that were stripped away were the parts which established an oligarchy of nobles – scarcely better, I'm sure you would agree.

What remained, the Magna Carta Prince John signed with the hands you forced to dive into too many nobles' debt and taught the people to rise against, established the rights of free men which even a King could not wipe away. Including the right not to be thrown willy-nilly into dungeons because Caligula didn't like the way you ate turnips. Habeus Corpus, the right to breathe free air or know precisely why you weren't. The protection of outlaws.

It opened the door to democracy. To a Parliament where the House of Commons controls all the tax money in the land, just as you would have suggested. To a people who are free and strong and proud and bow to no terrorist's will.

The Soul of England was signed into law by the very man who sought to crush it. A better revenge, that King John himself signed Magna Carta, signed it into reality: the England of Robin Hood. Your dream, the dream you gave the people the strength to reach out and touch. Gave them the strength to stand and take. I like to think Kate was at the gates when they opened to admit his enemies. I like to think it was Tuck's draft that was laid before him. I like to think Much, the Earl of Bonchurch, got to see him take up the pen in his hand. But then, I like to think that John Little died in the arms of his wife with his son at his side, and that Will and Djaq Scarlett brokered a final peace between their peoples. I don't know if they did. In fact, I doubt it. I'm sure you're watching them, you tell me.

You left, like Cinderella, at midnight. The night was darkest just before the dawn. But you held strong in the battle, won the Soul of England, and your men kept it alive during the Long Dark Night – in your memory.

So we remember you, Robin of Locksley. And we light up the dark. Smile down at us in your joy, the brightest star in the night sky.


	44. Parting Words

**Parting Words**

**The Age of Heroes**

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This was a story of how an abandoned country became a great nation. Of how tyrants were tamed. Of how a world was made anew in the image of a scruffy outlaw and his loyal band. And it was magnificent.

But what of that? I'm not being funny, but what does that do for us now? With foreign wars and confusion of powers at home, with dishonesty run amok and widespread poverty always peeking around the corners ever more insistently, with injustice beating down the door? There is no Robin of Locksley to cast off his titles and surge to our aid. We need Miracle Max to make a pill to bring you back, but he retired long ago when one too many bean counters spit at his craft. The Age of Heroes is over.

This is a lie they have been telling since man first invented stories. Because every story serves two purposes: to remind us of the greatness of humanity worthy of songs and remembrance; and to remind us that we don't do things that way anymore, the Age of Heroes is over, that kind of thing only worked back when everyone was running around in tights, this is the Age of the Bean Counter and the Small Lies of the Politician.

_Like Hell it is_.

Every age is the Age of Heroes. The Time of Miracles is not past and it is not to come. It is always now. We are all living in the Age of Heroes, and we are all the Citizen of Locksley who might be called up into a company of the best men in England. We are all Kate, we are all Will Scarlett, we are all Allen-a-Dale, we are even all Little John. We could all become Djaq or Tuck. Some of us might even be lucky enough to be Much or Marian. We are all Guy of Gisborne.

The Age of Heroes is now. We are Robin Hood. We are stars in the night sky. And we are waiting for our hero to bring us back to life. We are the stuff of minstrel's songs. There is too much, far too much for one of us to defeat, but that never stopped you. We are all Robin Hood.

The Time of Miracles is now.


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